“IT IS A SPLENDID PROJECT AND MAY BE EXECUTED
A CENTURY HENCE, BUT IT IS LITTLE SHORT OF MADNESS
1 TO THINK OF IT AT THIS DAY.”
1. Thomas Jefferson, 1809 HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1699
The French engineer Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, Seigneur de Vauban and later Marquis de Vauban suggested the linking by canal of Lakes Erie and Ontario. ERIE CANAL
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
Erie Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1724
Cadwallader Colden proposed a canal linking Lake Erie with the Hudson River. ERIE CANAL
“HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE” BEING A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN TIME (JUST AS THE PERSPECTIVE IN A PAINTING IS A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN SPACE), TO “LOOK AT THE COURSE OF HISTORY MORE GENERALLY” WOULD BE TO SACRIFICE PERSPECTIVE ALTOGETHER. THIS IS FANTASY-LAND, YOU’RE FOOLING YOURSELF. THERE CANNOT BE ANY SUCH THINGIE, AS SUCH A PERSPECTIVE.
Erie Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1768
New York’s royal governor Sir Henry Moore proposed, in a letter to the Earl of Hillsborough, improving the stretch of the Mohawk River between Schenectady and Fort Stanwyx, by installing a canal and locks around the Canajoharie Falls. Nothing would come of this. ERIE CANAL HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1783
While on a trip through the Mohawk Valley west of Albany, New York, George Washington became persuaded that this would be a great pathway for a great canal. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1784
George Washington visited Fort Stanwix (Rome, New York), and proposed canals on the Hudson and Mohawk rivers. ERIE CANAL HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1785
An ordinance was passed for sale of western lands. During this period virtually all inland travel was by the Great Lakes and by river:
Christopher Colles proposed speedy settlement of the waste and unappropriated lands of the western frontiers of New York, and improvement of the inland navigation between Albany and Oswego. ERIE CANAL HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1786
A bill was defeated that had proposed improvement of the navigability of the Mohawk River, Wood Creek, and the Onondaga River, with a view to opening an inland navigation route to Oswego and for extending the same, if practicable, to Lake Erie. ERIE CANAL HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1789
On the trail between the Genesee Valley and Fort Niagara in upstate New York, Gilbert R. Berry opened an inn at what was then called Hartford and is now called Avon.
By this point the Nicholites near Deep River, North Carolina had erected a meetinghouse of their own and no longer needed to utilize the local meetinghouse of the Quakers.
Closing out his affairs in North Carolina (presumably this would have meant, in part, the selling off of his slaves), Elkanah Watson relocated to Albany, New York. There he would become a successful businessman, found the Bank of Albany, and become the chief promoter for an Erie Canal. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1791
March 21, Monday: Act authorizing a survey and making of estimates for improvement of navigation prospects on the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers, and Wood Creek. ERIE CANAL
December: Elkanah Watson proposed to the state legislature that natural waterways could be used to create a shipping canal across upstate New York. ERIE CANAL HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1792
J.A. Phillips’s GENERAL HISTORY OF INLAND NAVIGATION FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC. ERIE CANAL
March 30, Friday: The New York legislature passed “an act for establishing and opening lock navigation within the state.” ERIE CANAL
July 13: Francis Adrian Vanderkemp’s A FORECAST OF THE ERIE CANAL. ERIE CANAL
September: Report of a committee appointed to explore the western waters in the state of New York, for the purpose of prosecuting the inland lock navigation. A Western Inland Lock Navigation Company was incorporated to open a navigable waterway from Albany to Lakes Seneca and Ontario. A Northern Inland Lock Navigation Company was incorporated to improve navigation between the Hudson and Lake Champlain. Private firm builds locks to bypass Little Falls. First locks built in U.S. ERIE CANAL HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1796
Robert Fulton’s A TREATISE ON THE IMPROVEMENT OF CANAL NAVIGATION. ERIE CANAL HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1797
February 5, Sunday: French forces entered Pesaro, home of Gioachino Rossini, without opposition.
Robert Fulton wrote to President George Washington referring to potential improvements, including a canal to Lake Erie.
ERIE CANAL HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1798
Native Americans in the Mile Strip along the Niagara River granted Horatio Jones and Jasper Parrish two square miles of land north of Scajaquada Creek, near the northern city limit of today’s Buffalo, New York.
A Niagara Canal Company was incorporated to dig a canal between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie.
Construction began on the German Flats Canal.
2d report of the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company. ERIE CANAL HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1800
Gouverneur Morris, US minister to England, suggested in a letter from London that a waterway could be built between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. CANALS ERIE CANAL
October 27, Monday: Benjamin Wade was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. His family was poor and for awhile he would need to work as a laborer on the Erie Canal, before teaching school. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1803
Gouverneur Morris wrote to New York State Surveyor-General Simeon DeWitt, suggesting the possibility of an artificial river across the state. ERIE CANAL HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1807
Jesse Hawley, while imprisoned for debt at Canandaigua, wrote thirteen essays under the name Hercules, proposing a canal across New York State. ERIE CANAL
July 12, Sunday: Silas Casey, who would become a Major General of Union volunteers, was born.
A letter from Jesse Hawley to Erastus Granger expressed a projection of an Erie Canal.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1 day 12 of 7 M / At meeting this morng Matthew Franklin was with us & preached full an hour & an half in the Afternoon we Sat in Silence My mind has been in quite a destitute situation as to life, & have hardly been able to obtain a morsel of bread - took tea & spent most of the evening at Sam Thurstons RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1808
February: Joshua Forman introduced a canal resolution to the New York State Assembly. ERIE CANAL
April 4, Monday: A “Report on Public Roads and Canals” by Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin was made in pursuance of a resolution of the US Senate on March 2, 1807. ERIE CANAL
Jesse Hawley’s treatise “Observations on Canals” predicted that a canal across New York would greatly increase the state’s trade and importance (this consisted of his series of 13 pseudonymous articles composed while he had been imprisoned for debt in Canandaigua). The New York legislature introduced a bill to fund a feasibility study for a New York State canal, retaining Judge James Geddes to make surveys of routes across the state, to Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. He completed his study and reported that the project could work despite the 500-foot change in elevation from west to east.
A pamphlet was published proposing a wooden flume linking New-York with Philadelphia.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd 4th of 4th M / The day has passed as many, yea very many others have with a retrograde motion as respects devotion of heart - In the eveng called at Saml Gibbs on buisness & then a few minutes at CR’s RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1809
Thomas Jefferson was asked for a pledge of federal aid to build a canal along the Mohawk River valley, from Lake Erie to the Atlantic Ocean:
It is a splendid project and may be executed a century hence, but it is little short of madness to think of it at this day.
Later
New York engineer James Geddes surveyed a possible route for a state canal (this would eventually be adopted). ERIE CANAL
THE TASK OF THE HISTORIAN IS TO CREATE HINDSIGHT WHILE INTERCEPTING ANY ILLUSION OF FORESIGHT. NOTHING A HUMAN CAN SEE CAN EVER BE SEEN AS IF THROUGH THE EYE OF GOD.
January 20, Friday: James Geddes recommended to the New York State legislature that they dig a canal along the Hudson-Erie route. ERIE CANAL
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal:
Erie Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
6th day 20th of 1 M / Nothing material to insert the times are dull & streightening as to the outward, the inward is no better but with respect to the outward I believe it is my duty to confess that I am wonderfully helped from day to day being favord with a little incoming tho’ small but sufficient to answer our present needs due thanks be given to him who helpeth RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1810
An aristocratic New York politician, DeWitte Clinton, became a booster of the proposal for a humongous Erie Canal engineering project. (How do you know when you’ve won? –When some almighty dude like DeWitte Clinton takes your idea away from you.)
At Pittsfield, Massachusetts, one of the farsighted guys who had been an early daddy of the idea of a humongous Erie Canal engineering project in upstate New York, Elkanah Watson, organized the initial county fair in these United States of America (he’s now credited as “The Father of America’s County and State Fairs”).
Daddy
March 13, Tuesday: George Gordon, Lord Byron and Hobhouse left Smyrna and slept at Han, near the river Halesus.
The New York State Senate passes a resolution calling for Governeur Morris, Stephen Van Rensselaer, DeWitte Clinton, Simeon De Witt, William North, Thomas Eddy, and Peter B. Porter to be appointed commissioners to explore routes for a canal across the state, and to recommend improvements to Onondaga Lake. ERIE CANAL
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 13 of 3 Mo// Again the usual rounds & but little else, my cold seems better for which I desire to be thankful with all the rest of my favors. — HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
NEVER READ AHEAD! TO APPRECIATE MARCH 13TH, 1810 AT ALL ONE MUST APPRECIATE IT AS A TODAY (THE FOLLOWING DAY, TOMORROW, IS BUT A PORTION OF THE UNREALIZED FUTURE AND IFFY AT BEST).
March 15, Thursday: David Ruggles was born in a free black family of Lyme, Connecticut, David Ruggles, Senior and Nancy Ruggles.
The New York State House of Representatives concurred with the Senate’s resolution calling for Governeur Morris, Stephen Van Rensselaer, DeWitte Clinton, Simeon De Witt, William North, Thomas Eddy, and Peter B. Porter to be appointed commissioners to explore routes for a canal across the state, and to recommend improvements to Onondaga Lake. ERIE CANAL
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 15th of 3 M 1810// I had a poor dull meeting, but the fault was my own. Oh when shall I experience more of the fullness. ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
June 30, Saturday: New-York mayor DeWitte Clinton, along with fellow canal commissioner Thomas Eddy and his son, left New York for Albany, New York by steamboat. ERIE CANAL
Bayreuth was annexed by Bavaria.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day 30 of 6th Mo// I feel again a good degree of life in my mind, it seems as if the good spirit was near ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
Erie Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
July: Robert Fulton left New-York for Teviotdale, New York.
DeWitte Clinton visited the future Rochesterville, New York area while scouting a canal route. ERIE CANAL
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
July 1, Sunday: DeWitte Clinton’s boat arrived at Albany, New York before daylight. He and the Eddys put up at Gregory’s tavern. A meeting of the canal commissioners was held at the Surveyor-General’s office. All of the commissioners were present except Porter, who would arrive that evening. Morris and Van Rensselaer was making the journey by land; the others by water. General North was to meet the boat at Utica. ERIE CANAL
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 1st of 7th Mo// At Meeting this forenoon Our Dear H Dennis was concerned in a Sweet testimony alsso D Buffum in a few Words. to me it was a good Meeting — In the Afternoon We (ie) my self & Wife went down to my fathers intending to go from there to meeting but his Clock being much to slow we got deceived in the time of day & when we got into the meeting house Yard the Meeting was gatherd & still. I took out my Watch & found it was half an hour past the time of gathering, unwilling to disturb the meeting we turn’d & came to my fathers again & spent the Afternoon — In the eveng I called at D Ws D Rs & J Es ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
Erie Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1811
William Weston reviewed plans by mail, for the Erie Canal. Robert Fulton was appointed to an Erie Canal commission.
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
February: Report of the Commissioners appointed to explore the route of inland navigation from Hudson’s river to Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. ERIE CANAL
April 8, Monday: The New York State legislature created a canal commission. ERIE CANAL
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 8th of 4th Mo// My H spent the Afternoon At Aunt Anna Carpenters In the eveng I was at Jonathon Bowens with cousin A Greene & H Dennis. Cousin Anne had a Solemn testimony to bear, “The grass withereth & the flower fadeth but the Word of the Lord endureth forever” was her opening, which she handled in a very pertinent manner. ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
Erie Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1812
In upstate New York, the banks of the Genesee Falls were wilderness. With the tapering off of hostilities between England and the United States, and the prospect of the Erie Canal that was to cross above the Genesee River, the area east of the Genesee River, on the future site of Rochester, was purchased for mill sites by Samuel J. Andrews and Caleb Atwater, and the village to be named Rochesterville was laid out below the falls.
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
Erie Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1813
William Weston turned down an offer to become chief engineer on the Erie Canal. Benjamin Wright accepted the post.
The Seneca Lock Navigation Company was incorporated and secured the rights from The Western Inland Lock Navigation Company to improve navigation on the Seneca River. CANALS
NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE
Erie Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1816
De Witt Clinton’s canal visit to Buffalo. ERIE CANAL
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
February 16, Friday: MEMORIAL OF THE CITIZENS OF NEW YORK, IN FAVOUR OF A CANAL NAVIGATION BETWEEN THE GREAT WESTERN LAKES AND THE TIDE-WATERS OF THE HUDSON was drafted by De Witt Clinton and signed by many citizens. ERIE CANAL
March 8, Friday: On the basis of surveys done by Benjamin Wright, the New York State Canal Commission submitted its final report to the legislature.
Erie Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
April 17, Wednesday: The New York General Assembly passed a canal law. ERIE CANAL
Myron Holley had been elected to the New York General Assembly and had helped Senator DeWitt Clinton get this Erie Canal project underway. He, Stephen Van Rensselaer, De Witt Clinton, Joseph Ellicott, and Samuel Young were designated as commissioners in parallel with their service respectively in the Assembly and in the Senate. Nathan Roberts would assist Benjamin Wright on the portion of the canal between Rome and Montezuma. Canvass White was hired to assist on the final survey. Holley and Young were to be acting commissioners, with actual duties, on salary. Holley would be appointed Treasurer of the canal commission and would purchase a home in Lyons, New York in order to be near the canal. For eight years he would be traveling by horse from place to place, using his saddle bags as his office, sleeping in shacks and in backwoods inns and working on his accounts by candlelight. In handling $2,500,000 in public funds, at the end he would be discovered with a $30,000 deficit at least half of which was in notes he had put his signature to in order to keep the canal project moving forward. For this, he would need to make over his Lyons property to the state. CANALS
Josef von Spaun wrote to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, enclosing manuscript copies of settings of his poems by “a 19-year-old composer by the name of Franz Schubert.” He asked whether Schubert might dedicate an edition of his German songs to the poet (these manuscripts would arrive back at the sender without comment).
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
Erie Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1817
Colonel Nathaniel Rochester attended a session of the legislature at Albany to attempt to gain recognition for Monroe County. This year he was also made secretary of a convention meeting in Canandaigua to consider De Witt Clinton’s canal proposal.
Chief Erie Canal engineer Judge Benjamin Wright appointed David Stanhope Bates assistant engineer on the canal’s middle division. Work began. This gigantic canal project actually can be said to be coextensive with Henry Thoreau’s life, in that it started in 1817 and came to its far end in 1862. In this year John Jervis was promoted from axeman on the canal to rod-man, Nathan Roberts was made assistant engineer for the canal, and David Stanhope Bates was made Assistant Engineer, under Benjamin Wright, on the canal’s middle division. William C. Young, a rodman on two of the engineering and surveying parties, issued his REMINISCENCES OF SURVEYS OF THE ERIE CANAL IN 1816-1817.
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
April 15, Tuesday: After federal funding had been denied, the New York Legislature created a fund for the construction of the Erie, Champlain, and Hudson Canal. Ground was 1st broken at Rome on the 4th of July, and it would be completed on the 26th of October, 1825. ERIE CANAL
The institution which would become the American School for the Deaf was founded in Hartford. This was the first American school for those who could not hear. (Many schools available, of course, for those Americans who would not hear.) It had been in the early years of the 19th Century that the Reverend Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet of Hartford CT had tried to teach Alice Cogswell, the deaf daughter of a surgeon. The Reverend Gallaudet had then visited the French National Institution for Deaf-Mutes and persuaded Laurent Clerc to come to the United States. On the 52-day voyage back across the Atlantic, Gallaudet had helped Clerc with English while Clerc had helped Gallaudet with sign language. Clerc was himself a tolerant man, but he would die in 1869 and his successors would not be tolerant, they would be “oralists” of the stamp of Horace Mann,
Erie Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
Sr. who would attempt to intercept the teaching of sign language to the deaf.
The impaired were to be forced to learn to make sounds even if the sounds which they produced were just awful because they themselves could not hear these sounds. Their speaking teacher would not need to know anything about sign language and would not need to have any previous experience with deaf children, any more than a teacher would have needed to have previous experience with idiots before attempting to manage them. The impaired would be forced to “learn to read lips” even if the best that could ever be achieved by “lip- reading” techniques due to the inherent ambiguity of mouth shaping was the understanding of but one sentence in ten. It would become a discipline problem, it would become a matter of training in obedience. Eventually, during our own lifetimes, if these children were caught trying to sign to each other behind their speaking teacher’s back, the teacher was instructed to draw lines upon their offending hands with a ruler. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
Our national birthday, Friday the 4th of July: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, or Hathorne’s, 13th birthday.
The state of New York began to compete with the Cumberland Road by starting work at Rome NY upon a massive engineering project, a canal toward Lake Erie. It was on this day full of national symbolism that Governor DeWitt Clinton removed the first symbolic shovelful of dirt, at Rome, from the ditch that was to connect the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean by a route through the rivers of the United States, to be termed “the Erie Canal.” Benjamin Wright would be chief engineer of the Middle Section. This project to dig a long canal 40 feet wide and 4 feet deep was projected to cost the nation M$5, would actually cost the nation M$7 (in money that would now be the equivalent of M$700), and would be for a great stretch of our national existence our nation’s single largest project — until, that is, we outdid ourselves by embarking on a scheme to construct an “atomic” bomb.2 CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY CANALS
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 4 of 7 M / This day has been, ever since my rememberance a noisy one & of great anxiety to parents & those who have the care of children. I feel it more & more so, tho’ we have but one to care for, yet with his advance in life we feel care to increase on his account - It has passed away without accident for which I desire to thankful. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
December: Fifteen miles of the Erie Canal had been completed. ERIE CANAL
The head and torso of the Egyptian statue known then as “younger Memnon” was transferred in the harbor of Malta to HMS Weymouth.
2. The Erie Canal was a very good bargain despite its cost, and would already have returned its investment, by fees obtained while being only partially open, even before its official completion. The project can be said to be coextensive with Thoreau’s life, in that it started in 1817 and came to its far end in 1862. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1818
Nathan Roberts was made resident engineer on the Erie Canal between Rome and Syracuse.
A Southern Route was proposed for the Erie Canal. Construction was begun on an aqueduct to carry the canal across Rochester’s Irondequoit Valley.
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
June 10, Wednesday: The newly rebuilt opera house in Pesaro was opened with a performance of La gazza ladra by Gioachino Rossini in his birthplace.
Construction began on the Champlain Canal, to connect the Erie Canal near Cohoes, New York with Lake Champlain.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 10th of 6 M / Saw in the Boston Papers this evening, the notice of the Death of “Wm Brown of Salem an estimable member & minister of the Society of Friends aged 30” he was an acquaintance of mine & a hopeful man, he has gone, he has passed into the Valley of the Shadow of death in scarcely the meridian [of] life - may this be to all a solemn Warning to be prepared to meet the final change - I feel it so to me & hope the impressons may be lasting — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
Erie Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1819
Close to 1,000 Erie Canal workers died of malaria in the Montezuma Swamp. The canal had come to be open between Utica and the Seneca River. Nathan Roberts ran the canal from the Seneca River to Rochester. David Stanhope Bates was promoted to Division Engineer on the Irondiquoit section. John Jervis was made Resident Engineer on the middle section. Irish immigrant Valentine Gill, father of engineer E.H. Gill, became a surveyor on the canal.
An essay on “Canals” appeared in Abraham Rees’s CYCLOPEDIA, which would become the basic textbook for American canal engineers.
October 22, Friday: The Erie Canal opened between Rome and Utica, New York, when the canal boat The Chief Engineer arrived at Rome after a 4-hour trip.
Helen Louisa Thoreau’s 7th birthday.
THE FALLACY OF MOMENTISM: THIS STARRY UNIVERSE DOES NOT CONSIST OF A SEQUENCE OF MOMENTS. THAT IS A FIGMENT, ONE WE HAVE RECOURSE TO IN ORDER TO PRIVILEGE TIME OVER CHANGE, A PRIVILEGING THAT MAKES CHANGE SEEM UNREAL, DERIVATIVE, A MERE APPEARANCE. IN FACT IT IS CHANGE AND ONLY CHANGE WHICH WE EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, TIME BEING BY WAY OF RADICAL CONTRAST UNEXPERIENCED — A MERE INTELLECTUAL CONSTRUCT. THERE EXISTS NO SUCH THING AS A MOMENT. NO MOMENT HAS EVER
Erie Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
EXISTED.
November 3, Wednesday: The idiom “all nature” was in use, meaning “everybody,” as witness this report in the Massachusetts Spy: Father and I have just returned from the balloon — all nature was there, and more too. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
At this point, across the nation, news of the opening of the Erie Canal between Rome and Utica, New York, a distance of 96 miles, was hitting the newspapers:
BETWEEN ANY TWO MOMENTS ARE AN INFINITE NUMBER OF MOMENTS, AND BETWEEN THESE OTHER MOMENTS LIKEWISE AN INFINITE NUMBER, THERE BEING NO ATOMIC MOMENT JUST AS THERE IS NO ATOMIC POINT ALONG A LINE. MOMENTS ARE THEREFORE FIGMENTS. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
THE PRESENT MOMENT IS A MOMENT AND AS SUCH IS A FIGMENT, A FLIGHT OF THE IMAGINATION TO WHICH NOTHING REAL CORRESPONDS. SINCE PAST MOMENTS HAVE PASSED OUT OF EXISTENCE AND FUTURE MOMENTS HAVE YET TO ARRIVE, WE NOTE THAT THE PRESENT MOMENT IS ALL THAT EVER EXISTS — AND YET THE PRESENT MOMENT BEING A MOMENT IS A FIGMENT TO WHICH NOTHING IN REALITY CORRESPONDS.
Erie Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1820
HISTORY OF THE RISE, PROGRESS, AND EXISTING CONDITION OF THE WESTERN CANALS IN THE STATE OF NEW-YORK: FROM SEPTEMBER 1788, TO THE COMPLETION OF THE MIDDLE SECTION OF THE GRAND CANAL, IN 1819, TOGETHER WITH THE RISE, PROGRESS, AND EXISTING STATE OF MODERN AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES, ON THE BERKSHIRE SYSTEM, FROM 1807, TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE IN THE STATE OF NEW-YORK, JANUARY 10, 1820. BY ELKANAH WATSON (Albany: Published by D. Steele, No. 472 S. Market-street. Packard & Van Benthuysen, Printers. 1820).
During the construction of the Erie Canal, in this year, a process of natural cementing was discovered and was patented in the US by Canvass White.3 In the 1820s and 1830s, a great religious revival would sweep over western New York State as if the waters of that new waterway, which would cement the Great Lakes to the Atlantic beginning in 1825, had created a sort of “psychic highway” along which could travel water-insoluble preachments of the Shaker persuasion –and Mormon –and Adventist –and Utopian socialist –and Millerite persuasions. Well, another explanation of this curious phenomenon, slightly more plausible than hearts of cast stone, would be that the people of this region had brought themselves to abandon some of the more offensive aspects of their Calvinist intellectual heritage, without having been able to abandon their need to make some people Right by making other people Wrong. They had yet to be able to dispense with the extreme expressions of moral fervor and maliciousness to which they had for so long been accustomed. Their new non-Calvinist world would have been insufficiently mysterious and insufficiently dangerous, without some set of beliefs or other to which they could continue to sacrifice themselves and others. So there was a market there, and the
3. Although this new construction material was a considerable improvement over the traditional Roman cement, the “Portland” cement with which we are now familiar would not come along until much later. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
need was filled.
The Little Falls Canal of the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company was bought out by New York State and merged into the Erie Canal. While it has often been dismissed as a mere marginal precursor of the grander Erie Canal project, this network of artificial works and natural waterway improvements connecting the Mohawk River port at Schenectady with the Great Lakes harbor at Oswego had already been, in its own right, a dramatic and significant American transportation development.
During the 1820s and 1830s the local agricultural exhibitions that had been initiated by Elkanah Watson in 1810 were still being supported by private donations, and chronically were short of funds for premiums, fair grounds, judges, transportation, publicity, and entertainment.
There was at this point not even a wall along the river side of Fort Niagara, and the interior of the post was completely exposed to fire from Fort Mississauga. Peace was its only prayer, and the 1820s would in fact be a time of peace along the Niagara River. The garrison of the fortress was small, only sufficient to guard the portage route around Niagara Falls. A similar garrison served the British for a similar purpose on the opposite shore.
Peter and Augustus S. Porter instituted a ferry service across the Niagara River, and for tourists a series of gardens, walks, bridges, and staircases from which the sublimity of the scenery might best be appreciated.
In this year two American whiskey smugglers went over the Niagara Falls (but not, apparently, on purpose). During this decade the “fashionable” tour, for Americans, was a string of attractive venues that followed quite HDT WHAT? INDEX
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closely the path of our most rapid economic development, up the grand Hudson lined with cliffs and with stately homes from New-York to Albany and the glamorous Saratoga and Ballston watering-holes of “the springs” and then west along the route of the Erie Canal to an experience of the sublime at Niagara Falls.4 This was referred to as “the northern route.” Since the 1820s, fashionable tourists had used their travels to stake a claim to status. But scenic tourism made the most powerful claim of all: not about money, but about gentility. In that sense, the cult of scenery was indeed a kind of “conspicuous aesthetic consumption,” as Raymond Williams termed it.... [I]ts most powerful offer was internal: the assurance that one truly deserved the social authority awarded to the “refined and cultivated” classes. During this decade the Crawford brothers would be monopolizing the tourist business to and through Crawford Notch in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Initial publication of Salma Hale’s textbook THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FROM THEIR FIRST SETTLEMENT AS COLONIES TO THE CLOSE OF THE WAR WITH GREAT BRITAIN IN 1815, employing as author identification “A Citizen of Massachusetts.”
Alvan Fisher depicted the great horseshoe falls at “Niagara Falls.”
May: The section of the Erie Canal between Utica and the Seneca River was opened for public use.
4. There is a very extensive literature on the 19th-Century aesthetic of the sublime. Steady yourself before you consult it by watching baseball games on TV until you are utterly bored out of your mind, then begin with Edmund Burke’s A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS OF THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL. To study our changing attitudes toward the landscape, consult Paul Shepard’s MAN IN THE LANDSCAPE: A HISTORIC VIEW OF THE ESTHETICS OF NATURE (NY: Knopf, 1967) and Elizabeth McKinsey’s NIAGARA FALLS: ICON OF THE AMERICAN SUBLIME (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985). HDT WHAT? INDEX
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July 1, Saturday: The 1st toll was collected on the Erie Canal.
The 1st publication of the newspaper Courrier de la Meuse.
This day marked the final appearance of Muzio Clementi at a meeting of the London Philharmonic Society.
Publication of LAMIA, ISABELLA, THE EVE OF ST AGNES, AND OTHER POEMS by John Keats.
President of Haiti Jean-Pierre Boyer was advertising in American gazettes for free black immigrants with tools and skills. On this day he wrote accurately of the astonishing fertility of its soil that made this blest island the garden of the western archipelago (something of which we need to remind ourselves from time to time in the midst of the present’s eroded barrenness and general filthiness) and of a structure of law ensuring a free country to Africans and their descendants (that’s before US Marines, Tonton Macoute, and locals such as Papa Doc and Baby Doc). There yet remain on the Peninsula of Samaná, enduring present conditions, some impoverished descendants of those 19th-Century immigrants who elected to linger. Niles Weekly Register, Volume 18, page 326: President Boyer is inviting the free blacks of the United States to emigrate to Hayti, in preference to Africa, promising them protection and assistance. An address to the Haytians on this subject says — “Our past sufferings — our unexampled efforts to regain our primitive rights — our solemn oath to live free and independent — the happy situation on our island, which may be justly called the queen of the Antilles — the astonishing fertility of its soil, which makes it the garden of the western archipelago — the progress of its inhabitants in civilization, and in some of the fine arts; our wise constitution which insures a free country to Africans and their descendants; all lead us to believe that the hand of Providence has destined Hayti for a land of promise, a sacred asylum, where our unfortunate brethren will, in the end, see their wounds healed by the balm of equality, and their tears wiped away by the protecting hand of liberty.” NILES WEEKLY REGISTER
FIGURING OUT WHAT AMOUNTS TO A “HISTORICAL CONTEXT” IS WHAT THE CRAFT OF HISTORICIZING AMOUNTS TO, AND THIS NECESSITATES DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN THE SET OF EVENTS THAT MUST HAVE TAKEN PLACE BEFORE EVENT E COULD BECOME POSSIBLE, AND MOST CAREFULLY DISTINGUISHING THEM FROM ANOTHER SET OF EVENTS THAT COULD NOT POSSIBLY OCCUR UNTIL SUBSEQUENT TO EVENT E.
Erie Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
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August 20, Sunday: A meeting was held at Canandaigua’s Mill’s Hotel to discuss the building of a canal linking Canandaigua Lake with the Erie Canal. John C. Spencer, James D. Bemis, Asa Stanley, Dudley Marvin, and William H. Adams were appointed to study a route.
A setting of Spiritus meus by Antonio Salieri was performed for the initial time, in Vienna.
Gentleman’s Magazine was able to applaud a lady, when it came across one: The numerous family and large domestic establishment of Mrs Fry are properly conducted with the utmost propriety. Nor does her zeal in the holy cause of humanity ever lead her to infringe on those domestic duties which every female is called upon conscientiously to fulfil. ELIZABETH FRY RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
December: Fifteen men, mostly Quakers, knowing the Erie Canal would come through the area, had bought up the site of the future Lockport. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1821
Canvass White recommended running the Erie Canal on the northern side of the Mohawk River, in the Schenectady-to-Albany portion. The stretch between Utica and High Falls was complete. The canal reached Rochesterville, where construction had already been completed. The canal reached Albany.
April 21, Saturday: Lion of the West departed from Rochester, New York, as the initial boat from there to Utica along the Erie Canal.
Benderli Ali Pasha replaced Seyyid Ali Pasha as Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire.
In a duel between Viscount Petersham and Mr. Wedderburne, there were no injuries.
August: John Williams of Gloucester was lost at sea.
Upon publication of George Gordon, Lord Byron’s “Don Juan” III-V, Murray’s premises in London were mobbed by Booksellers’ messengers.
Percy Bysshe Shelley visited Lord Byron at Ravenna and urged him and the Gambas to move to Pisa.
Shelley, at age 19, to Elizabeth Hitchener: “Adequacy of motive is sufficient ... potence will become omnipotence.”
Contractor William Britton, aided by 30 convicts from Auburn Prison, began construction of Rochesterville’s Erie Canal Aqueduct over the Genesee River.
August 20, Monday: A meeting was held at Canandaigua’s Mill’s Hotel to discuss the building of a canal linking Canandaigua Lake with the Erie Canal. John C. Spencer, James D. Bemis, Asa Stanley, Dudley Marvin, William H. Adams were appointed to study a route.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 20th of 8 M 1821 / Between 11 & 12 OClock at night Uncle BENJAMIN GOULD departed this life In the 87th Year of his Age, he was the oldest child of my Grandfather James Gould & Martha his wife - he is all the own Uncle I ever knew, there was another brother by the name of Joseph but he died before I was born. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1822
On the Erie Canal, the packet Myron Holley arrived in Bushnell’s Basin, south of Rochester. The town of Fairport was created on the site. Nathan Roberts was named to plan the Lockport section of the canal.
A dam was constructed on Schoharie Creek at Fort Hunter to create a slack water section where Erie Canal boats could be towed across the creek. Lock #20 was completed nearby. The canal was opened to Schenectady. The canal reached Palmyra. An aqueduct was built at Little Falls.
The Erie Canal’s Great Embankment was built, a mile in length and 70 feet high, to carry the canal over Rochester’s Irondequoit Valley. Construction on a new aqueduct across the Genesee River began. Grimsby sandstone quarried at the nearby village of Carthage was used. Mason William Morgan arrived to work on the aqueduct.
June: The contract for the easternmost prism (bed) of the Erie Canal was awarded to John Merriam and Obadiah Densmore.
July 2, Tuesday: River boats began using the Erie Canal section from the Genesee River to Pittsford, with overland connection for several miles until the Irondequoit valley embankment could be completed in October.
As the free black man Denmark Vesey and 5 slaves who had been his aides were being hanged at Blake’s Landing, Charleston, one of the condemned men, Peter Poyas, was overheard to be imploring the others —
“Do not open your lips! Die silent, as you shall see me do.”
October: 180 miles of the Erie Canal opened, from Rochester to Little Falls.
October 27, Sunday: Opening of a 280-mile segment of the Erie Canal, between Rochester and Albany in upstate New York.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 27th of 10 M / Our Morning Meeting was a Solid good one [—]n Dennis & father Rodman appeared acceptable in [——]imony. — In the Afternoon to me it was a [-] roving time & but little benefit - Father was [-]n engaged in a few words. —— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
October 29, Monday: The initial boat with a cargo of Rochester flour left for Little Falls, along the Erie Canal. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1823
Thomas James (1804-1891), an escaped slave, came to Rochester and found employment on the Erie Canal. (He would in 1827 help found an African Methodist Episcopal Zion Society, and with the Reverend James active in the anti-slavery movement, this AME Zion church on Favor Street would become a waystation of what would eventually come to be termed the “Underground Railroad.”)
Rochester celebrated the opening of the Erie Canal. The first pier of its new aqueduct was carried away by spring floods.
The Erie Canal reached Albany. Brockport became the temporary western terminus of the waterway.
William Avery of Pompey, New York, tested his steam-powered canal boat on the Erie Canal.
John Jervis became construction superintendent on a 50-mile stretch of the Erie Canal.
A triple lock was built on the Champlain Canal at Whitehall, New York. The canal opened. It connected with the Erie Canal by crossing the Mohawk River on a slackwater navigation below Waterford. The canal boat Gleaner arrived via the Champlain Canal and the Hudson River.
Genesee Valley business interests petitioned the state legislature for a valley canal to connect the Erie Canal with the Allegheny River near Olean.
Samuel Wilkeson and Dr. Ebenezer Johnson of Buffalo supervised the construction of a dam and a lock at the mouth of Tonawanda Creek in North Tonawanda, the first work done on the western end of the Erie Canal. The dam deepened the creek’s level to four and a half feet.
A culvert was built at Medina to carry the Erie Canal over a road. Abutments and piers for the aqueduct at Rexford were transported to the site. The Cohoes flight was built. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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June: The Baltimore-Conewago Canal commissioners left Baltimore to meet with De Witt Clinton in New York City. They hired James Geddes as their canal director. From New York they continued to Albany and took the Erie Canal to Cayuga Lake. They took a steamboat to Ithaca and traveled overland to the Susquehanna River (their efforts would be for nothing — the canal would never be dug).
A negrero flying the Spanish flag (as shown below), the Aimable Socorro, master Jozé Inza, on one of its three known Middle Passage voyages out of an unknown area of Africa, arrived at the port of Havana.
THE MIDDLE PASSAGE RACE SLAVERY
October: An aqueduct designed by David Stanhope Bates was completed in Rochester, to carry the Erie Canal over the Genesee River.
October 1, Wednesday: King Fernando VII of Spain was returned to full power by the French and immediately began the execution of his enemies.
The eastern section of the Erie Canal was completed, with continuous navigation possible from the Genesee River to Albany and Lake Champlain. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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October 6, Monday: The 802-foot stone aqueduct over the Genesee River, constructed by David Stanhope Bates, opened in Rochester. ERIE CANAL
The East India Company government of the island of St. Helena found Robert F. Seale’s model of their island at the scale of a foot to a mile to be highly worthy, in fact considering it to be so dangerously accurate that it was a potential risk to the island’s security — the governor needed to make sure this would not be glimpsed by wicked foreign eyes.
In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day Morning 6th of 10 M 1823 / Br Jonathon & Sister Elizabeth set out for their home this morning at 9 OC. — I could not go up to take leave of them - I felt too much to admit of my doing it without emotion — I desire their welfare & have no doubt they desire ours. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
October 8, Wednesday: The first Erie Canal boats arrived in Albany.
November: The canalboat Mary and Hannah arrived in New-York with a cargo of wheat, the first to arrive from Seneca Lake via the Erie Canal. The owners were presented with an engraved urn.
When the whaler Globe out of Martha’s Vineyard reached Hawaii six of its frustrated and disappointed crewmembers deserted. Captain Thomas Worth was able to recruit seven local replacements, but of course these were not sailors of the highest quality — of these seven new crewmembers, five would be involving themselves, with Samuel B. Comstock, in a mutiny. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1824
The Reverend Beriah Green left off being Professor of Sacred Literature in the Western Reserve College in Ohio and became the President of the Oneida Institute of upstate New York, located alongside the Erie Canal about 20 miles east of Lake Oneida and 4 miles from Utica. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Amos Eaton’s A GEOLOGICAL AND AGRICULTURAL SURVEY OF THE DISTRICT ADJOINING THE ERIE CANAL IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK. TAKEN UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE HON. STEPHEN VAN RENSSELAER (Albany: Packard & Van Benthuysen).
The first pier of the new Genesee River aqueduct was carried away by spring floods.
Erie Canal construction served as Utica’s water supply aqueduct.
Professor Eaton’s report on the rock formations along the route of the future Erie Canal, commissioned by Stephen Van Rennselaer, is published.
The aqueducts at Crescent and at Rexford were completed, as was the entire Erie Canal distance between Schenectady and Albany.
The river and guard locks of the Erie Canal at Tonawanda were completed. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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April: The Brockport/Rochester section of the Erie Canal opened.
Manhattan Company superintendent John Lozier lowered his estimate of possible new customers for his new 25-foot-diameter surface-water well at the corner of what has become Reade Street and Centre Street, pumping that surface water into a 550,000-gallon reservoir on Chambers Street by the power of two 18-horsepower steam engines (operated 16 hours per day) and distributing it through 23 miles of hollowed-log pipes, to 1,000, while guaranteeing to those who would sign up an uninterrupted supply of water. At an annual rate of $12 only a few would be able to subscribe to this water service, but this was the situation that would obtain on Manhattan Island for some three decades. The New-York Common Council considered the plan that canal engineer Canvass White had submitted on January 3d for obtaining water out of the Bronx River and eventually out of the Byram River by the force of gravity alone, and paid him his fee of $1,100 but then shelved his proposals. The assembly favored a competing plan by educator John Griscom to create a New-York Water- Works, but the legislative sessions would end with no action taken.
April 12, Monday: De Witt Clinton was ousted by Van Buren’s colleagues as an Erie Canal commissioner.
Publication of Giacomo Costantino Beltrami’s LA DÉCOUVERTE DES SOURCES DU MISSISSIPPI ET DE LA RIVIÈRE SANGLANTE. DESCRIPTION DU COURS ENTIRE DU MISSISSIPPI, QUIE N’ÉTAIT CONNU, QUE PARTIELLEMENT, ET D’UNE GRANDE PARTIE DE CELUI DE LA RIVIERE SANGLANTE, PRESQUE ENTIÈREMENT INCONNUE; AINSI QUE DU COURS ENTIRE DE L’OHIO. APERÇUS HISTORIQUES, DES ENDROITS LES PLUS INTÉRESSANS, QU’ON Y RECONTRE. OBSERVATIONS CRITICO-PHILOSOPHIQUES, SUR LES MOEURS, LA RELIGION, LES SUPERSTITIONS, LES COSTUMES, LES ARMES, LES CHASSES, LA GUERRE, LA PAIX, LE DÉNOMBREMENT, L’ORGINE, &C. &C. DE PLUSIEURS NATIONS INDIENNES. PARALLELE DE CES PEOPLES AVEC CEUX DE L’ANTIQUITÉ, DU MOYEN AGE, ET DU MODERNE. COUP D’OEIL, SUR LES COMPAGNIES NORD-OUEST, ET DE LA BAIE D’HUDSON, AINSI QUE SUR LA COLONIE SELKIRK. PREUVES EVIDENTES, QUE LE MISSISSIPPI EST LA PREMIÈRE RIVIÈRE DU MONDE. PAR G. C. B ELTRAMI … (Nouvelle-Orléans: Impr. par Benjamin Levy, 1824).
LA DÉCOUVERTE ...
June 1, Tuesday: Gustaf af Wetterstedt replaced Lars von Engestrom as Prime Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sweden.
The Erie Canal Commission signed a 2d, overlapping contract with Samuel Wilkeson and Ebenezer Johnson, for building the dam at Tonawanda. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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July 12, Saturday: On the 8th day after our national celebration, according to the journal of Hezikiah Prince
Jr., news of the simultaneous deaths of two Founding Fathers and ex-Presidents during that anniversary came to the small port town of Thomaston in Maine: Papers brought the news that Presidents Old Adams and Jefferson both died on the 4th of July past. CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY
George Gordon, Lord Byron’s funeral.
Horatio Gates Spafford registered his A POCKET GUIDE FOR THE TOURIST AND TRAVELLER ALONG THE LINE OF THE CANALS AND THE INTERIOR COMMERCE OF THE STATE OF NEW-YORK and subsequently would publish this.
October 26, Tuesday: The digging of the western end of the Erie Canal at Lockport, to Lake Erie, was completed.
November: The results of the Presidential elections in the US left no candidate with a majority in the Electoral College. Andrew Jackson has 99 votes, John Quincy Adams 81, William Crawford 41, and Henry Clay 37. In 1825 Adams would be elected President, by the House of Representatives.
De Witt Clinton was again elected governor of New York, partly in a backlash due to his ouster from the Erie Canal commissioner’s post by Van Buren’s colleagues.
R.C. Dallas’s “Recollections of Lord Byron” appeared anonymously in Gentleman’s Magazine. NEW POETRY OF 1824
Commodore David Porter took a landing party of 200 onto Spanish territory to attack the town of Fajardo on the island of Puerto Rico, because this town had been sheltering pirates and also because American naval officers had been insulted (whatever that might have been). The local people tendered an apology and the Commodore would be court-martialed for having overstepped his authority. US MILITARY INTERVENTIONS HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1825
Benjamin Wade switched from the study of medicine in Albany to the study of law in Ohio.
The National Road reached St. Clairsville.
Propaganda would spread, that the Pope was about to land an army to set up a New-World Papal State. Rumor had it that this was to be centered upon Cincinnati, Ohio.5
The Ohio legislature authorized the construction of an Ohio and Erie canal and a Miami and Erie canal. David Stanhope Bates was made Chief Engineer of the Ohio River canal around the falls at Louisville. In Ohio, between this year and 1842, there would be an influx of settlers accompanying the construction and completion of the Erie Canal, the Ohio canal between Cleveland and Portsmouth, and the Miami-Erie Canal between Toledo and Cincinnati.
5. “Gosh, Larry, how many divisions does the Pope have?” HDT WHAT? INDEX
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In this year American workers struck, for a 10-hour workday.
Orlando Allen’s The Erie Canal Gun-Telegraph.
John Rutherford’s FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS IN RELATION TO THE ORIGIN AND COMPLETION OF THE ERIE CANAL was published by N. B. Holmes in New-York.
Engineer James Geddes surveyed the route for a Chemung Canal, to connect the Southern Tier, at Elmira, with the Erie Canal via Seneca Lake.
Two entrepreneurs purchased the remains of Silver Creek’s giant tree, and took it on a tour via the Erie Canal.
Cadwallader D. Colden’s FROM THE ATLANTIC TO BUFFALO, BY CANAL: FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS IN RELATION TO THE ORIGIN AND COMPLETION OF THE ERIE CANAL: A MEMOIR PREPARED AT THE REQUEST OF COMMITTEE OF THE COMMON COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, AND PRESENTED TO THE MAYOR OF THE CITY, AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE COMPLETION OF THE NEW YORK CANALS.
The Erie Canal Aqueduct at Rochester was completed. The locks at Lockport were opened to traffic. After years of construction the Erie Canal was providing a direct connection between the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean, by way of Buffalo. The new canal was utterly superseding nearly two centuries of commercial HDT WHAT? INDEX
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through traffic along the Niagara River. This not only impacted the business of the merchants of Youngstown and Lewiston, and the operators of the portage path around Niagara Falls, but also did away with the US Army’s chief reason for maintaining a post at the mouth of this river. Within the year the army would decided to abandon Fort Niagara. The troops would be withdrawn and the buildings and fortifications placed in the hands of a caretaker.
Theodore Dwight, Jr., 1st edition, THE NORTHERN TRAVELLER; CONTAINING THE ROUTES TO NIAGARA, QUEBEC, AND THE SPRINGS. (The author was a nephew of the Reverend Timothy Dwight, president of Yale College, and a great-grandson of the Reverend Jonathan Edwards. This is the man who is suspected of authoring 1836’s inflammatory anti-Catholic tract AWFUL DISCLOSURES OF THE HÔTEL DIEU NUNNERY OF MONTRÉAL.)
Per Bernhard Karl’s THIS WAS AMERICA, this was the Erie Canal: The canal is no more than four feet deep, so that only ships and barges expressly built for it can navigate it. The vessel that brought us to Albany today was 70 feet long, 14 wide, and drew 2 feet of water. It was covered, including a roomy salon and a kitchen, and was very neatly maintained. On account of the numerous locks on the way, progress was very slow; our ship did only three miles an hour, since passage through each lock took four minutes. The craft was drawn by a three-horse team which plodded along a narrow path parallel to the canal, even under the frequent bridges. These bridges, about 300 between Albany HDT WHAT? INDEX
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and Utica, are made of wood and are very coarsely built; generally they belong to farmers, and serve to connect the fields on either side.
Mexico, while still subject to Spain in 1821, had granted land within the Mexican state of Texas to Moses Austin. White settlers had brought with them black slaves, to the extent that in this year one out of every five residents of Texas was a slave.
Richard Henry Horne went with Captain Thurlow Smith, R.N. as a midshipman on an expedition to Mexico, was at the siege of Vera Cruz and the taking of San Juan Ulloa, was taken prisoner, came close to being executed, escaped, and enlisted as a midshipman in the Mexican navy to take part in their ongoing struggle with Spanish forces based in Cuba. Leaving that conflict after being defrauded of prize-money, he cruised off the Floridas,6 landed at New-York, went up the Erie Canal, visited some Native American villages, visited Niagara Falls breaking two of his ribs, lost all his money at billiards, worked his way along the St. Lawrence River to Montréal and Québec, was shipwrecked in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, visited the cod-fisheries off Newfoundland, and finally was able to sail toward England on a lumber schooner.
June 7, Tuesday: The Marquis de Lafayette, touring America, arrived in Rochester, New York, on the Governor Clinton via the Erie Canal.
June 9, Thursday: The Marquis de Lafayette, touring America, arrived in Rome, New York, on the Governor Clinton via the Erie Canal.
Suleika II D.717, a song by Franz Schubert to words of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, was performed for the initial time, in the Jagor’schersaal, Berlin. Other Schubert songs also were performed to great success.
In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 9th of 6 M / Our Meeting tho’ small was a season of favour a time in which celestial dew fell on some minds to their Strengthening & comfort. — James Hazard David Buffum & Father Rodman were engaged in lively seasonable & pertinent testimonys & James Hazard appeard in the conclusion in humble supplication RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
6. During this period Florida was regarded as two places, one on the Atlantic coast and the other on the Caribbean coast. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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June 10, Friday: Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin played at a charity concert in Warsaw where he engages in lengthy improvisations. A critic for the Leipzig Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung was present. His review marks the 1st time that Chopin’s fame travels outside of Poland.
Johann Nepomuk Hummel was given honorary membership in the Societe de Musique, Geneva.
Pharamond, an opera by Adrien Boieldieu, Berton and Rodolphe Kreutzer to words of Ancelot, Guiraud, and Soumet, was performed for the initial time, in the Academie Royale de Musique, Paris. The work was presented for the coronation of Charles X.
The Marquis de Lafayette, touring America, arrived in Whitesboro, New York, on the Governor Clinton via the Erie Canal.
June 17, Friday: At 2:00 PM in the Niagara Square of Buffalo, New York, Israel Thayer, Isaac Thayer, and Nelson Thayer, who had murdered a man who loaned them money, attired in white caps and shrouds, were “launched into eternity” and then placed in three coffins before a crowd of some 20,000-30,000.
A decision was reached, that we would commemorate the Battle of Bunker Hill upon its 50th anniversary by implementation of Gridley Bryant’s project for a railway to bring the granite of a ledge in Milton a dozen miles to the top of Breed’s Hill. The granite of this Milton ledge was quite similar to the syenite which the ancient Egyptians had quarried at Aswan for their own high-culture creations. This 12-mile track would be the 1st direct ancestor of what is now, brag, by far the world’s most extensive and elaborate rail system.
At the 50th Anniversary celebration of the Battle of Bunker Hill, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody “Shook hands with La Fayette with the gloves on herewith enclosed —.” Anne Royall, seeking support to publish her first book, was in Boston, and attended the Marquis de Lafayette’s laying of the cornerstone (of course with the assistance of laborers) of the Bunker Hill monument. The speech in dedication was of course made byDaniel Webster. (“X” marks the spot, below. Why Bunker Hill rather than Breeds Hill where the revolutionary redoubt actually had been positioned? –a good reason would be because that was where nobody got murderized, but do we ever do anything like this for any good reason?)
The cornerstone of a Bunker Hill monument was laid. On this swing through Boston, Margaret Fuller, who had written longingly to the Marquis when she was fifteen years of age, finally got her opportunity to meet the man of her dreams. When the FrancoAmerican hero went back to Paris, he would sail with heavy trunks of HDT WHAT? INDEX
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dirt not from Bunker Hill but from Breed’s Hill — later to be used to top off his grave.
X
WALDEN: Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly PEOPLE OF empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the WALDEN ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads.
LAFAYETTE SAM PATCH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Due to insufficient funds and insufficient interest, this misplaced misbegotten Bunker Hill monument would stand uncompleted — until indiscriminate patriotism would overwhelm poor planning during the Year of Our Lord 1843. As early as 1776, some steps were taken toward the commemoration of the battle of Bunker Hill and the fall of General Warren, who was buried upon the hill the day after the action. The Massachusetts Lodge of Masons, over which he presided, applied to the provisional government of Massachusetts, for permission to take up his remains and to bury them with the usual solemnities. The Council granted this request, on condition that it should be carried into effect in such a manner that the government of the Colony might have an opportunity to erect a monument to his memory. A funeral procession was had, and a Eulogy on General Warren was delivered by Perez Morton, but no measures were taken toward building a monument. A resolution was adopted by the Congress of the United States on the 8th of April, 1777, directing that monuments should be erected to the memory of General Warren, in Boston, and of General Mercer, at Fredericksburg; but this resolution has remained to the present time unexecuted. On the 11th of November, 1794, a committee was appointed by King Solomon’s Lodge, at Charlestown,7 to take measures for the erection of a monument to the memory of General Joseph Warren at the expense of the Lodge. This resolution was promptly carried into effect. The land for this purpose was presented to the Lodge by the Hon. James Russell, of Charlestown, and it was dedicated with appropriate ceremonies on the 2d of December, 1794. It was a wooden pillar of the Tuscan order, eighteen feet in height, raised on a pedestal eight feet square, and of an elevation of ten feet from the ground. The pillar was surmounted by a gilt urn. An appropriate inscription was placed on the south side of the pedestal. In February, 1818, a committee of the legislature of Massachusetts was appointed to consider the expediency of building a monument of American marble of the memory of General Warren, but this proposal was not carried into effect. As the half-century from the date of the battle drew toward a close, a stronger feeling of the duty of commemorating it began to be awakened in the community. Among those who from the first manifested the greatest interest in the subject, was the late William Tudor, Esq. He expressed the wish, in a letter still preserved, to see upon the battle-ground “the noblest monument in the world,” and he was so ardent and persevering in urging the project, that it has been stated that he first conceived the idea of it. The steps taken in execution of the project, from the earliest private conferences among the gentlemen first 7. General Warren, at the time of his decease, was Grand Master of the Masonic Lodges in America. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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engaged in it to its final completion, are accurately sketched by Mr. Richard Frothingham, Jr., in his valuable History of the Siege of Boston. All the material facts contained in this note are derived from his chapter on the Bunker Hill Monument. After giving an account of the organization of the society, the measures adopted for the collection of funds, and the deliberations on the form of the monument, Mr. Frothingham proceeds as follows:— “It was at this stage of the enterprise that the directors proposed to lay the corner-stone of the monument, and ground was broken (June 7th) for this purpose. As a mark of respect to the liberality and patriotism of King Solomon’s Lodge, they invited the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts to perform the ceremony. They also invited General Lafayette to accompany the President of the Association, Hon. Daniel Webster, and assist in it. “This celebration was unequalled in magnificence by any thing of the kind that had been seen in New England. The morning proved propitious. The air was cool, the sky was clear, and timely showers the previous day had brightened the vesture of nature into its loveliest hue. Delighted thousands flocked into Boston to bear a part in the proceedings, or to witness the spectacle. At about ten o’clock a procession moved from the State House towards Bunker Hill. The military, in their fine uniforms, formed the van. About two hundred veterans of the Revolution, of whom forty were survivors of the battle, rode in barouches next to the escort. These venerable men, the relics of a past generation, with emaciated frames, tottering limbs, and trembling voices, constituted a touching spectacle. Some wore, as honorable decorations, their old fighting equipments, and some bore the scars of still more honorable wounds. Glistening eyes constituted their answer to the enthusiastic cheers of the grateful multitudes who lined their pathway and cheered their progress. To this patriot band succeeded the Bunker Hill Monument Association. Then the Masonic fraternity, in their splendid regalia, thousands in number. Then Lafayette, continually welcomed by tokens of love and gratitude, and the invited guests. Then a long array of societies, with their various badges and banners. It was a splendid procession, and of such length that the front nearly reached Charlestown Bridge ere the rear had left Boston Common. It proceeded to Breed’s Hill, where the Grand Master of the Freemasons, the President of the Monument Association, and General Lafayette, performed the ceremony of laying the corner-stone, in the presence of a vast concourse of people.” The procession then moved to a spacious amphitheatre on the HDT WHAT? INDEX
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northern declivity of the hill, when the following address was delivered by Mr. Webster, in the presence of as great a multitude as was ever perhaps assembled within the sound of a human voice.8
Oration began: This uncounted multitude before me and around me proves the feeling which the occasion has excited. These thousands of human faces, glowing with sympathy and joy, and from the impulses of a common gratitude turned reverently to heaven in this spacious temple of the firmament, proclaim that the day, the place, and the purpose of our assembling have made a deep impression on our hearts. If, indeed, there be any thing in local association fit to affect the mind of man, we need not strive to repress the emotions which agitate us here. We are among the sepulchres of our fathers. We are on ground, distinguished by their valor, their constancy, and the shedding of their blood. We are here, not to fix an uncertain date in our annals, nor to draw into notice an obscure and unknown spot. If our humble purpose had never been conceived, if we ourselves had never been born, the 17th of June, 1775, would have been a day on which all subsequent history would have poured its light, and the eminence where we stand a point of attraction to the eyes of successive generations. But we are Americans. We live in what may be called the early age of this great continent; and we know that our posterity, through all time, are here to enjoy and suffer the allotments of humanity. We see before us a probable train of great events; we know that our own fortunes have been happily cast; and it is natural, therefore, that we should be moved by the contemplation of occurrences which have guided our destiny before many of us were born, and settled the condition in which we should pass that portion of our existence which God allows to men on earth. We do not read even of the discovery of this continent, without feeling something of a personal interest in the event; without being reminded how much it has affected our own fortunes and our own existence. It would be still more unnatural for us, therefore, than for others, to contemplate with unaffected minds that interesting, I may say that most touching and pathetic scene, when the great discoverer of America stood on the deck of his shattered bark, the shades of night falling on the sea, yet no man sleeping; tossed on the billows of an unknown ocean, yet the stronger billows of alternate hope and despair tossing his own troubled thoughts; extending forward his harassed frame, straining westward his anxious and eager eyes, till Heaven at last granted him a moment of rapture and ecstasy, in blessing his vision with the sight of the unknown world. Nearer to our times, more closely connected with our fates, and therefore still more interesting to our feelings and affections, is the settlement of our own country by colonists from England. 8. Edwin P. Whipple’s THE GREAT SPEECHES AND ORATIONS OF DANIEL WEBSTER WITH AN ESSAY ON DANIEL WEBSTER AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE (Boston: Little, Brown, 1879). Whipple derived this material from Octavius Brooks Frothingham’s HISTORY OF THE SIEGE OF BOSTON. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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We cherish every memorial of these worthy ancestors; we celebrate their patience and fortitude; we admire their daring enterprise; we teach our children to venerate their piety; and we are justly proud of being descended from men who have set the world an example of founding civil institutions on the great and united principles of human freedom and human knowledge. To us, their children, the story of their labors and sufferings can never be without its interest. We shall not stand unmoved on the shore of Plymouth, while the sea continues to wash it; nor will our brethren in another early and ancient Colony forget the place of its first establishment, till their river shall cease to flow by it.9 No vigor of youth, no maturity of manhood, will lead the nation to forget the spots where its infancy was cradled and defended. But the great event in the history of the continent, which we are now met here to commemorate, that prodigy of modern times, at once the wonder and the blessing of the world, is the American Revolution. In a day of extraordinary prosperity and happiness, of high national honor, distinction, and power, we are brought together, in this place, by our love of country, by our admiration of exalted character, by our gratitude for signal services and patriotic devotion. The Society whose organ I am10 was formed for the purpose of rearing some honorable and durable monument to the memory of the early friends of American Independence. They have thought, that for this object no time could be more propitious than the present prosperous and peaceful period; that no place could claim preference over this memorable spot; and that no day could be more auspicious to the undertaking, than the anniversary of the battle which was here fought. The foundation of that monument we have now laid. With solemnities suited to the occasion, with prayers to Almighty God for his blessing, and in the midst of this cloud of witnesses, we have begun the work. We trust it will be prosecuted, and that, springing from a broad foundation, rising high in massive solidity and unadorned grandeur, it may remain as long as Heaven permits the works of man to last, a fit emblem, both of the events in memory of which it is raised, and of the gratitude of those who have reared it. We know, indeed, that the record of illustrious actions is most safely deposited in the universal remembrance of mankind. We know, that if we could cause this structure to ascend, not only till it reached the skies, but till it pierced them, its broad surfaces could still contain but part of that which, in an age of knowledge, hath already been spread over the earth, and which history charges itself with making known to all future times. We know that no inscription on entablatures less broad than the 9. An interesting account of the voyage of the early emigrants to the Maryland Colony, and of its settlement, is given in the official report of Father White, written probably within the first month after the landing at St. Mary’s. The original Latin manuscript is still preserved among the archives of the Jesuits at Rome. The “Ark” and the “Dove” are remembered with scarcely less interest by the descendants of the sister colony, than is the “Mayflower” in New England, which thirteen years earlier, at the same season of the year, bore thither the Pilgrim Fathers. 10. Mr. Webster was at this time President of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, chosen on the decease of Governor John Brooks, the first President. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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earth itself can carry information of the events we commemorate where it has not already gone; and that no structure, which shall not outlive the duration of letters and knowledge among men, can prolong the memorial. But our object is, by this edifice, to show our own deep sense of the value and importance of the achievements of our ancestors; and, by presenting this work of gratitude to the eye, to keep alive similar sentiments, and to foster a constant regard for the principles of the Revolution. Human beings are composed, not of reason only, but of imagination also, and sentiment; and that is neither wasted nor misapplied which is appropriated to the purpose of giving right direction to sentiments, and opening proper springs of feeling in the heart. Let it not be supposed that our object is to perpetuate national hostility, or even to cherish a mere military spirit. It is higher, purer, nobler. We consecrate our work to the spirit of national independence, and we wish that the light of peace may rest upon it for ever. We rear a memorial of our conviction of that unmeasured benefit which has been conferred on our own land, and of the happy influences which have been produced, by the same events, on the general interests of mankind. We come, as Americans, to mark a spot which must for ever be dear to us and our posterity. We wish that whosoever, in all coming time, shall turn his eye hither, may behold that the place is not undistinguished where the first great battle of the Revolution was fought. We wish that this structure may proclaim the magnitude and importance of that event to every class and every age. We wish that infancy may learn the purpose of its erection from maternal lips, and that weary and withered age may behold it, and be solaced by the recollections which it suggests. We wish that labor may look up here, and be proud, in the midst of its toil. We wish that, in those days of disaster, which, as they come upon all nations, must be expected to come upon us also, desponding patriotism may turn its eyes hitherward, and be assured that the foundations of our national power are still strong. We wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce, in all minds, a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object to the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it rise! let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and parting day linger and play on its summit. We live in a most extraordinary age. Events so various and so important that they might crowd and distinguish centuries are, in our times, compressed within the compass of a single life. When has it happened that history has had so much to record, in the same term of years, as since the 17th of June, 1775? Our own Revolution, which, under other circumstances, might itself have been expected to occasion a war of half a century, has been achieved; twenty-four sovereign and independent States erected; HDT WHAT? INDEX
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and a general government established over them, so safe, so wise, so free, so practical, that we might well wonder its establishment should have been accomplished so soon, were it not for the greater wonder that it should have been established at all. Two or three millions of people have been augmented to twelve, the great forests of the West prostrated beneath the arm of successful industry, and the dwellers on the banks of the Ohio and the Mississippi become the fellow-citizens and neighbors of those who cultivate the hills of New England.11 We have a commerce, that leaves no sea unexplored; navies, which take no law from superior force; revenues, adequate to all the exigencies of government, almost without taxation; and peace with all nations, founded on equal rights and mutual respect. Europe, within the same period, has been agitated by a mighty revolution, which, while it has been felt in the individual condition and happiness of almost every man, has shaken to the centre her political fabric, and dashed against one another thrones which had stood tranquil for ages. On this, our continent, our own example has been followed, and colonies have sprung up to be nations.12 Unaccustomed sounds of liberty and free government have reached us from beyond the track of the sun; and at this moment the dominion of European power in this continent, from the place where we stand to the south pole, is annihilated for ever. In the mean time, both in Europe and America, such has been the general progress of knowledge, such the improvement in legislation, in commerce, in the arts, in letters, and, above all, in liberal ideas and the general spirit of the age, that the whole world seems changed. Yet, notwithstanding that this is but a faint abstract of the things which have happened since the day of the battle of Bunker Hill, we are but fifty years removed from it; and we now stand here to enjoy all the blessings of our own condition, and to look abroad on the brightened prospects of the world, while we still have among us some of those who were active agents in the scenes of 1775, and who are now here, from every quarter of New England, to visit once more, and under circumstances so affecting, I had almost said so overwhelming, this renowned theatre of their courage and patriotism. VENERABLE MEN! you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous day. You are now where you stood fifty years ago, this very hour, with your brothers and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder, in the strife for your country. Behold, how altered! The same heavens are indeed over your heads; the same ocean rolls at your feet; but all else how changed! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you see no mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charlestown. The ground strewed with the dead and the dying; the impetuous charge; the 11. That which was spoken of figuratively in 1825 has, in the lapse of a quarter of a century, by the introduction of railroads and telegraphic lines, become a reality. It is an interesting circumstance, that the first railroad on the Western Continent was constructed for the purpose of accelerating the erection of this monument. 12. See President Monroe’s Message to Congress in 1823, and Mr. Webster’s speech on the Panama Mission, in 1826. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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steady and successful repulse; the loud call to repeated assault; the summoning of all that is manly to repeated resistance; a thousand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death;— all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no more. All is peace. The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers and roofs, which you then saw filled with wives and children and countrymen in distress and terror, and looking with unutterable emotions for the issue of the combat, have presented you to-day with the sight of its whole happy population, come out to welcome and greet you with a universal jubilee. Yonder proud ships, by a felicity of position appropriately lying at the foot of this mount, and seeming fondly to cling around it, are not means of annoyance to you, but your country’s own means of distinction and defence.13 All is peace; and God has granted you this sight of your country’s happiness, ere you slumber in the grave. He has allowed you to behold and to partake the reward of your patriotic toils; and he has allowed us, your sons and countrymen, to meet you here, and in the name of the present generation, in the name of your country, in the name of liberty, to thank you! But, alas! you are not all here! Time and the sword have thinned your ranks. Prescott, Putnam, Stark, Brooks, Read, Pomeroy, Bridge! our eyes seek for you in vain amid this broken band. You are gathered to your fathers, and live only to your country in her grateful remembrance and your own bright example. But let us not too much grieve, that you have met the common fate of men. You lived at least long enough to know that your work had been nobly and successfully accomplished. You lived to see your country’s independence established, and to sheathe your swords from war. On the light of Liberty you saw arise the light of Peace, like “another morn, 13. It is necessary to inform those only who are unacquainted with the localities, that the United States Navy Yard at Charlestown is situated at the base of Bunker Hill. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Risen on mid-noon”; and the sky on which you closed your eyes was cloudless. But ah! Him! the first great martyr in this great cause! Him! the premature victim of his own self-devoting heart! Him! the head of our civil councils, and the destined leader of our military bands, whom nothing brought hither but the unquenchable fire of his own spirit! Him! cut off by Providence in the hour of overwhelming anxiety and thick gloom; falling ere he saw the star of his country rise; pouring out his generous blood like water, before he knew whether it would fertilize a land of freedom or of bondage!—how shall I struggle with the emotions that stifle the utterance of thy name!14 Our poor work may perish; but thine shall endure! This monument may moulder away; the solid ground it rests upon may sink down to a level with the sea; but thy memory shall not fail! Wheresoever among men a heart shall be found that beats to the transports of patriotism and liberty, its aspirations shall be to claim kindred with thy spirit! But the scene amidst which we stand does not permit us to confine our thoughts or our sympathies to those fearless spirits who hazarded or lost their lives on this consecrated spot. We have the happiness to rejoice here in the presence of a most worthy representation of the survivors of the whole Revolutionary army. VETERANS! you are the remnant of many a well-fought field. You bring with you marks of honor from Trenton and Monmouth, from Yorktown, Camden, Bennington, and Saratoga. VETERANS OF HALF A CENTURY! when in your youthful days you put every thing at hazard in your country’s cause, good as that cause was, and sanguine as youth is, still your fondest hopes did not stretch onward to an hour like this! At a period to which you could not reasonably have expected to arrive, at a moment of national prosperity such as you could never have foreseen, you are now met here to enjoy the fellowship of old soldiers, and to receive the overflowings of a universal gratitude. But your agitated countenances and your heaving breasts inform me that even this is not an unmixed joy. I perceive that a tumult of contending feelings rushes upon you. The images of the dead, as well as the persons of the living, present themselves before you. The scene overwhelms you, and I turn from it. May the Father of all mercies smile upon your declining years, and bless them! And when you shall here have exchanged your embraces, when you shall once more have pressed the hands which have been so often extended to give succor in adversity, or grasped in the exultation of victory, then look abroad upon this lovely land which your young valor defended, and mark the happiness with which it is filled; yea, look abroad upon the whole earth, and see what a name you have contributed to give to your country, and what a praise you have added to freedom, and then rejoice in the sympathy and gratitude which beam upon your last days from the improved condition of mankind! The occasion does not require of me any particular account of 14. See the North American Review, Vol. XIII. p. 242. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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the battle of the 17th of June, 1775, nor any detailed narrative of the events which immediately preceded it. These are familiarly known to all. In the progress of the great and interesting controversy, Massachusetts and the town of Boston had become early and marked objects of the displeasure of the British Parliament. This had been manifested in the act for altering the government of the Province, and in that for shutting up the port of Boston. Nothing sheds more honor on our early history, and nothing better shows how little the feelings and sentiments of the Colonies were known or regarded in England, than the impression which these measures everywhere produced in America. It had been anticipated, that, while the Colonies in general would be terrified by the severity of the punishment inflicted on Massachusetts, the other sea-ports would be governed by a mere spirit of gain; and that, as Boston was now cut off from all commerce, the unexpected advantage which this blow on her was calculated to confer on other towns would be greedily enjoyed. How miserably such reasoners deceived themselves! How little they knew of the depth, and the strength, and the intenseness of that feeling of resistance to illegal acts of power, which possessed the whole American people! Everywhere the unworthy boon was rejected with scorn. The fortunate occasion was seized, everywhere, to show to the whole world that the Colonies were swayed by no local interest, no partial interest, no selfish interest. The temptation to profit by the punishment of Boston was strongest to our neighbors of Salem. Yet Salem was precisely the place where this miserable proffer was spurned, in a tone of the most lofty self-respect and the most indignant patriotism. “We are deeply affected,” said its inhabitants, “with the sense of our public calamities; but the miseries that are now rapidly hastening on our brethren in the capital of the Province greatly excite our commiseration. By shutting up the port of Boston, some imagine that the course of trade might be turned hither and to our benefit; but we must be dead to every idea of justice, lost to all feelings of humanity, could we indulge a thought to seize on wealth and raise our fortunes on the ruin of our suffering neighbors.” These noble sentiments were not confined to our immediate vicinity. In that day of general affection and brotherhood, the blow given to Boston smote on every patriotic heart from one end of the country to the other. Virginia and the Carolinas, as well as Connecticut and New Hampshire, felt and proclaimed the cause to be their own. The Continental Congress, then holding its first session in Philadelphia, expressed its sympathy for the suffering inhabitants of Boston, and addresses were received from all quarters, assuring them that the cause was a common one, and should be met by common efforts and common sacrifices. The Congress of Massachusetts responded to these assurances; and in an address to the Congress at Philadelphia, bearing the official signature, perhaps among the last, of the immortal Warren, notwithstanding the severity of its suffering and the magnitude of the dangers which threatened it, it was declared, HDT WHAT? INDEX
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that this Colony “is ready, at all times, to spend and to be spent in the cause of America.” But the hour drew nigh which was to put professions to the proof, and to determine whether the authors of these mutual pledges were ready to seal them in blood. The tidings of Lexington and Concord had no sooner spread, than it was universally felt that the time was at last come for action. A spirit pervaded all ranks, not transient, not boisterous, but deep, solemn, determined, “totamque infusa per artus Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet.” War, on their own soil and at their own doors, was, indeed, a strange work to the yeomanry of New England; but their consciences were convinced of its necessity, their country called them to it, and they did not withhold themselves from the perilous trial. The ordinary occupations of life were abandoned; the plough was staid in the unfinished furrow; wives gave up their husbands, and mothers gave up their sons, to the battles of a civil war. Death might come, in honor, on the field; it might come, in disgrace, on the scaffold. For either and for both they were prepared. The sentiment of Quincy was full in their hearts. “Blandishments,” said that distinguished son of genius and patriotism, “will not fascinate us, nor will threats of a halter intimidate; for, under God, we are determined that, wheresoever, whensoever, or howsoever we shall be called to make our exit, we will die free men.” The 17th of June saw the four New England Colonies standing here, side by side, to triumph or to fall together; and there was with them from that moment to the end of the war, what I hope will remain with them for ever, one cause, one country, one heart. The battle of Bunker Hill was attended with the most important effects beyond its immediate results as a military engagement. It created at once a state of open, public war. There could now be no longer a question of proceeding against individuals, as guilty of treason or rebellion. That fearful crisis was past. The appeal lay to the sword, and the only question was, whether the spirit and the resources of the people would hold out, till the object should be accomplished. Nor were its general consequences confined to our own country. The previous proceedings of the Colonies, their appeals, resolutions, and addresses, had made their cause known to Europe. Without boasting, we may say, that in no age or country has the public cause been maintained with more force of argument, more power of illustration, or more of that persuasion which excited feeling and elevated principle can alone bestow, than the Revolutionary state papers exhibit. These papers will for ever deserve to be studied, not only for the spirit which they breathe, but for the ability with which they were written. To this able vindication of their cause, the Colonies had now added a practical and severe proof of their own true devotion to it, and given evidence also of the power which they could bring to its support. All now saw, that, if America fell, she HDT WHAT? INDEX
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would not fall without a struggle. Men felt sympathy and regard, as well as surprise, when they beheld these infant states, remote, unknown, unaided, encounter the power of England, and, in the first considerable battle, leave more of their enemies dead on the field, in proportion to the number of combatants, than had been recently known to fall in the wars of Europe. Information of these events, circulating throughout the world, at length reached the ears of one who now hears me.15 He has not forgotten the emotion which the fame of Bunker Hill, and the name of Warren, excited in his youthful breast. SIR, we are assembled to commemorate the establishment of great public principles of liberty, and to do honor to the distinguished dead. The occasion is too severe for eulogy of the living. But, Sir, your interesting relation to this country, the peculiar circumstances which surround you and surround us, call on me to express the happiness which we derive from your presence and aid in this solemn commemoration. Fortunate, fortunate man! with what measure of devotion will you not thank God for the circumstances of your extraordinary life! You are connected with both hemispheres and with two generations. Heaven saw fit to ordain, that the electric spark of liberty should be conducted, through you, from the New World to the Old; and we, who are now here to perform this duty of patriotism, have all of us long ago received it in charge from our fathers to cherish your name and your virtues. You will account it an instance of your good fortune, Sir, that you crossed the seas to visit us at a time which enables you to be present at this solemnity. You now behold the field, the renown of which reached you in the heart of France, and caused a thrill in your ardent bosom. You see the lines of the little redoubt thrown up by the incredible diligence of Prescott; defended, to the last extremity, by his lion-hearted valor; and within which the corner-stone of our monument has now taken its position. You see where Warren fell, and where Parker, Gardner, McCleary, Moore, and other early patriots, fell with him. Those who survived that day, and whose lives have been prolonged to the present hour, are now around you. Some of them you have known in the trying scenes of the war. Behold! they now stretch forth their feeble arms to embrace you. Behold! they raise their trembling voices to invoke the blessing of God on you and yours for ever. Sir, you have assisted us in laying the foundation of this structure. You have heard us rehearse, with our feeble commendation, the names of departed patriots. Monuments and eulogy belong to the dead. We give them this day to Warren and his associates. On other occasions they have been given to your more immediate companions in arms, to Washington, to Greene, to Gates, to Sullivan, and to Lincoln. We have become reluctant to grant these, our highest and last honors, further. We would gladly hold them yet back from the little remnant of that immortal band. Serus in coelum redeas. Illustrious as are your 15. Among the earliest of the arrangements for the celebration of the 17th of June, 1825, was the invitation to General Lafayette to be present; and he had so timed his progress through the other States as to return to Massachusetts in season for the great occasion. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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merits, yet far, O very far distant be the day, when any inscription shall bear your name, or any tongue pronounce its eulogy! The leading reflection to which this occasion seems to invite us, respects the great changes which have happened in the fifty years since the battle of Bunker Hill was fought. And it peculiarly marks the character of the present age, that, in looking at these changes, and in estimating their effect on our condition, we are obliged to consider, not what has been done in our own country only, but in others also. In these interesting times, while nations are making separate and individual advances in improvement, they make, too, a common progress; like vessels on a common tide, propelled by the gales at different rates, according to their several structure and management, but all moved forward by one mighty current, strong enough to bear onward whatever does not sink beneath it. A chief distinction of the present day is a community of opinions and knowledge amongst men in different nations, existing in a degree heretofore unknown. Knowledge has, in our time, triumphed, and is triumphing, over distance, over difference of languages, over diversity of habits, over prejudice, and over bigotry. The civilized and Christian world is fast learning the great lesson, that difference of nation does not imply necessary hostility, and that all contact need not be war. The whole world is becoming a common field for intellect to act in. Energy of mind, genius, power, wheresoever it exists, may speak out in any tongue, and the world will hear it. A great chord of sentiment and feeling runs through two continents, and vibrates over both. Every breeze wafts intelligence from country to country; every wave rolls it; all give it forth, and all in turn receive it. There is a vast commerce of ideas; there are marts and exchanges for intellectual discoveries, and a wonderful fellowship of those individual intelligences which make up the mind and opinion of the age. Mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered; and the diffusion of knowledge, so astonishing in the last half-century, has rendered innumerable minds, variously gifted by nature, competent to be competitors or fellow-workers on the theatre of intellectual operation. From these causes important improvements have taken place in the personal condition of individuals. Generally speaking, mankind are not only better fed and better clothed, but they are able also to enjoy more leisure; they possess more refinement and more self-respect. A superior tone of education, manners, and habits prevails. This remark, most true in its application to our own country, is also partly true when applied elsewhere. It is proved by the vastly augmented consumption of those articles of manufacture and of commerce which contribute to the comforts and the decencies of life; an augmentation which has far outrun the progress of population. And while the unexampled and almost incredible use of machinery would seem to supply the place of labor, labor still finds its occupation and its reward; so HDT WHAT? INDEX
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wisely has Providence adjusted men’s wants and desires to their condition and their capacity. Any adequate survey, however, of the progress made during the last half-century in the polite and the mechanic arts, in machinery and manufactures, in commerce and agriculture, in letters and in science, would require volumes. I must abstain wholly from these subjects, and turn for a moment to the contemplation of what has been done on the great question of politics and government. This is the master topic of the age; and during the whole fifty years it has intensely occupied the thoughts of men. The nature of civil government, its ends and uses, have been canvassed and investigated; ancient opinions attacked and defended; new ideas recommended and resisted, by whatever power the mind of man could bring to the controversy. From the closet and the public halls the debate has been transferred to the field; and the world has been shaken by wars of unexampled magnitude, and the greatest variety of fortune. A day of peace has at length succeeded; and now that the strife has subsided, and the smoke cleared away, we may begin to see what has actually been done, permanently changing the state and condition of human society. And, without dwelling on particular circumstances, it is most apparent, that, from the before- mentioned causes of augmented knowledge and improved individual condition, a real, substantial, and important change has taken place, and is taking place, highly favorable, on the whole, to human liberty and human happiness. The great wheel of political revolution began to move in America. Here its rotation was guarded, regular, and safe. Transferred to the other continent, from unfortunate but natural causes, it received an irregular and violent impulse; it whirled along with a fearful celerity; till at length, like the chariot- wheels in the races of antiquity, it took fire from the rapidity of its own motion, and blazed onward, spreading conflagration and terror around. We learn from the result of this experiment, how fortunate was our own condition, and how admirably the character of our people was calculated for setting the great example of popular governments. The possession of power did not turn the heads of the American people, for they had long been in the habit of exercising a great degree of self-control. Although the paramount authority of the parent state existed over them, yet a large field of legislation had always been open to our Colonial assemblies. They were accustomed to representative bodies and the forms of free government; they understood the doctrine of the division of power among different branches, and the necessity of checks on each. The character of our countrymen, moreover, was sober, moral, and religious; and there was little in the change to shock their feelings of justice and humanity, or even to disturb an honest prejudice. We had no domestic throne to overturn, no privileged orders to cast down, no violent changes of property to encounter. In the American Revolution, no man sought or wished for more than to defend and enjoy his HDT WHAT? INDEX
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own. None hoped for plunder or for spoil. Rapacity was unknown to it; the axe was not among the instruments of its accomplishment; and we all know that it could not have lived a single day under any well-founded imputation of possessing a tendency adverse to the Christian religion. It need not surprise us, that, under circumstances less auspicious, political revolutions elsewhere, even when well intended, have terminated differently. It is, indeed, a great achievement, it is the master-work of the world, to establish governments entirely popular on lasting foundations; nor is it easy, indeed, to introduce the popular principle at all into governments to which it has been altogether a stranger. It cannot be doubted, however, that Europe has come out of the contest, in which she has been so long engaged, with greatly superior knowledge, and, in many respects, in a highly improved condition. Whatever benefit has been acquired is likely to be retained, for it consists mainly in the acquisition of more enlightened ideas. And although kingdoms and provinces may be wrested from the hands that hold them, in the same manner they were obtained; although ordinary and vulgar power may, in human affairs, be lost as it has been won; yet it is the glorious prerogative of the empire of knowledge, that what it gains it never loses. On the contrary, it increases by the multiple of its own power; all its ends become means; all its attainments, helps to new conquests. Its whole abundant harvest is but so much seed wheat, and nothing has limited, and nothing can limit, the amount of ultimate product. Under the influence of this rapidly increasing knowledge, the people have begun, in all forms of government, to think and to reason, on affairs of state. Regarding government as an institution for the public good, they demand a knowledge of its operations, and a participation in its exercise. A call for the representative system, wherever it is not enjoyed, and where there is already intelligence enough to estimate its value, is perseveringly made. Where men may speak out, they demand it; where the bayonet is at their throats, they pray for it. When Louis the Fourteenth said, “I am the state,” he expressed the essence of the doctrine of unlimited power. By the rules of that system, the people are disconnected from the state; they are its subjects; it is their lord. These ideas, founded in the love of power, and long supported by the excess and the abuse of it, are yielding, in our age, to other opinions; and the civilized world seems at last to be proceeding to the conviction of that fundamental and manifest truth, that the powers of government are but a trust, and that they cannot be lawfully exercised but for the good of the community. As knowledge is more and more extended, this conviction becomes more and more general. Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament. Life and power are scattered with all its beams. The prayer of the Grecian champion, when enveloped in unnatural clouds and darkness, is the appropriate political supplication for the HDT WHAT? INDEX
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people of every country not yet blessed with free institutions:— “Dispel this cloud, the light of heaven restore, Give me TO SEE,—and Ajax asks no more.” We may hope that the growing influence of enlightened sentiment will promote the permanent peace of the world. Wars to maintain family alliances, to uphold or to cast down dynasties, and to regulate successions to thrones, which have occupied so much room in the history of modern times, if not less likely to happen at all, will be less likely to become general and involve many nations, as the great principle shall be more and more established, that the interest of the world is peace, and its first great statute, that every nation possesses the power of establishing a government for itself. But public opinion has attained also an influence over governments which do not admit the popular principle into their organization. A necessary respect for the judgment of the world operates, in some measure, as a control over the most unlimited forms of authority. It is owing, perhaps, to this truth, that the interesting struggle of the Greeks has been suffered to go on so long, without a direct interference, either to wrest that country from its present masters, or to execute the system of pacification by force, and, with united strength, lay the neck of Christian and civilized Greek at the foot of the barbarian Turk. Let us thank God that we live in an age when something has influence besides the bayonet, and when the sternest authority does not venture to encounter the scorching power of public reproach. Any attempt of the kind I have mentioned should be met by one universal burst of indignation; the air of the civilized world ought to be made too warm to be comfortably breathed by any one who would hazard it. It is, indeed, a touching reflection, that, while, in the fulness of our country’s happiness, we rear this monument to her honor, we look for instruction in our undertaking to a country which is now in fearful contest, not for works of art or memorials of glory, but for her own existence. Let her be assured, that she is not forgotten in the world; that her efforts are applauded, and that constant prayers ascend for her success. And let us cherish a confident hope for her final triumph. If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn. Human agency cannot extinguish it. Like the earth’s central fire, it may be smothered for a time; the ocean may overwhelm it; mountains may press it down; but its inherent and unconquerable force will heave both the ocean and the land, and at some time or other, in some place or other, the volcano will break out and flame up to heaven. Among the great events of the half-century, we must reckon, certainly, the revolution of South America; and we are not likely to overrate the importance of that revolution, either to the people of the country itself or to the rest of the world. The late Spanish colonies, now independent states, under circumstances less favorable, doubtless, than attended our own revolution, have yet successfully commenced their national HDT WHAT? INDEX
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existence. They have accomplished the great object of establishing their independence; they are known and acknowledged in the world; and although in regard to their systems of government, their sentiments on religious toleration, and their provisions for public instruction, they may have yet much to learn, it must be admitted that they have risen to the condition of settled and established states more rapidly than could have been reasonably anticipated. They already furnish an exhilarating example of the difference between free governments and despotic misrule. Their commerce, at this moment, creates a new activity in all the great marts of the world. They show themselves able, by an exchange of commodities, to bear a useful part in the intercourse of nations. A new spirit of enterprise and industry begins to prevail; all the great interests of society receive a salutary impulse; and the progress of information not only testifies to an improved condition, but itself constitutes the highest and most essential improvement. When the battle of Bunker Hill was fought, the existence of South America was scarcely felt in the civilized world. The thirteen little Colonies of North America habitually called themselves the “Continent.” Borne down by colonial subjugation, monopoly, and bigotry, these vast regions of the South were hardly visible above the horizon. But in our day there has been, as it were, a new creation. The southern hemisphere emerges from the sea. Its lofty mountains begin to lift themselves into the light of heaven; its broad and fertile plains stretch out, in beauty, to the eye of civilized man, and at the mighty bidding of the voice of political liberty the waters of darkness retire. And, now, let us indulge an honest exultation in the conviction of the benefit which the example of our country has produced, and is likely to produce, on human freedom and human happiness. Let us endeavor to comprehend in all its magnitude, and to feel in all its importance, the part assigned to us in the great drama of human affairs. We are placed at the head of the system of representative and popular governments. Thus far our example shows that such governments are compatible, not only with respectability and power, but with repose, with peace, with security of personal rights, with good laws, and a just administration. We are not propagandists. Wherever other systems are preferred, either as being thought better in themselves, or as better suited to existing condition, we leave the preference to be enjoyed. Our history hitherto proves, however, that the popular form is practicable, and that with wisdom and knowledge men may govern themselves; and the duty incumbent on us is, to preserve the consistency of this cheering example, and take care that nothing may weaken its authority with the world. If, in our case, the representative system ultimately fail, popular governments must be pronounced impossible. No combination of circumstances more favorable to the experiment can ever be expected to occur. The last hopes of mankind, therefore, rest with us; and if it HDT WHAT? INDEX
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should be proclaimed, that our example had become an argument against the experiment, the knell of popular liberty would be sounded throughout the earth. These are excitements to duty; but they are not suggestions of doubt. Our history and our condition, all that is gone before us, and all that surrounds us, authorize the belief, that popular governments, though subject to occasional variations, in form perhaps not always for the better, may yet, in their general character, be as durable and permanent as other systems. We know, indeed, that in our country any other is impossible. The principle of free governments adheres to the American soil. It is bedded in it, immovable as its mountains. And let the sacred obligations which have devolved on this generation, and on us, sink deep into our hearts. Those who established our liberty and our government are daily dropping from among us. The great trust now descends to new hands. Let us apply ourselves to that which is presented to us, as our appropriate object. We can win no laurels in a war for independence. Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all. Nor are there places for us by the side of Solon, and Alfred, and other founders of states. Our fathers have filled them. But there remains to us a great duty of defence and preservation; and there is opened to us, also, a noble pursuit, to which the spirit of the times strongly invites us. Our proper business is improvement. Let our age be the age of improvement. In a day of peace, let us advance the arts of peace and the works of peace. Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered. Let us cultivate a true spirit of union and harmony. In pursuing the great objects which our condition points out to us, let us act under a settled conviction, and an habitual feeling, that these twenty-four States are one country. Let our conceptions be enlarged to the circle of our duties. Let us extend our ideas over the whole of the vast field in which we are called to act. Let our object be, OUR COUNTRY, OUR WHOLE COUNTRY, AND NOTHING BUT OUR COUNTRY. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of Wisdom, of Peace, and of Liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration for ever!
October 15: New York Governor De Witt Clinton’s party left Albany, New York on the Erie Canal.
Ludwig van Beethoven moved into his last residence, the Schwarzspanierhaus in Vienna. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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October 26, Wednesday: Governor DeWitt Clinton officially opened the Erie Canal and departed from Buffalo, New York aboard the Seneca Chief, eastward past Lockport, Rochester, and Rome to the canal’s junction with the Hudson River at Albany.16 Then the canal boat was towed down the river behind one of Clinton’s new steamboats (truncating several days’ journey into one account, as in fact the fastest of the canal boats traveled at but 3mph) into the harbor, where the US fleet, guns roaring, fell in line behind this barge. A series of 32-pounder cannon captured at Oliver Hazard Perry’s victory on Lake Erie had been distantly spaced along the entire canal, and as each one heard the detonation of the cannon to its north, it fired in relay. That signal required an hour and twenty minutes to pass from Buffalo to New-York — and then the process was repeated in reverse.
The Great Lakes had been connected to the Atlantic Ocean.
October 27, Thursday: New York Governor De Witt Clinton’s flotilla was welcomed at Rochester. Local dignitaries joined the flotilla aboard the Erie Canal boat The Young Lion of the West. That evening the city threw a grand ball.
November 4, Friday: In New-York, a group of artists dissatisfied with the Academy of Arts which had been founded in 1802 created their own new association. This new foundation would initially be known as the New York Drawing Association and would be led by Samuel F.B. Morse (in 1828 this group would designate itself the National Academy of Design).
New York Governor De Witt Clinton’s flotilla, towed by one of Clinton’s steamboats, reached New-York, was escorted into the harbor by the US fleet with guns roaring, and Giacomo Costantino Beltrami took part in festivities surrounding the opening of the Erie Canal, the largest canal in the world. At the height of the celebrations the notables ceremonially dumped a couple of kegs of Lake Erie water into the Atlantic. What they were celebrating, of course, was the fact that freight rates between Buffalo and New York were about to drop by more than an order of magnitude, from roughly $100.00 per ton to roughly $8.00 per ton. The ascendancy of New-York harbor over Boston Harbor was forever assured. CANALS
16. 363 miles in length, 40 feet wide, 4 feet deep, maximum displacement 75 tons; 77 locks, 90 feet by 15 feet; total lockage 655 feet. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1826
Erastus Bearcup was arrested in Rochester for shouting obscenities at ladies on a passing Erie Canal boat. Now, Erastus, you nasty lad, why’d you have to up and do a thing like that? HDT WHAT? INDEX
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418 boats arrived in Buffalo harbor during this year, and 1,100 craft locked through the Erie Canal. The locks south of Juncta were doubled.
Ebenezer Emmons graduated from Amos Eaton’s Rensselaer Institute (now Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) in Troy with its 1st class. In the year of his graduation, Emmons authored a MANUAL OF MINERALOGY AND GEOLOGY: DESIGNED FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS; AND FOR PERSONS ATTENDING LECTURES ON THESE SUBJECTS, AS ALSO A CONVENIENT POCKET COMPANION FOR TRAVELLERS, IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (Albany: Websters and Skinners), a textbook that was the 2d treatise of its kind written by an American for American students of geology.
PIONEER OF SCIENCE
Professor Amos Eaton planned a Rensselaer geological expedition through the western part of New York, aboard the canal boat LaFayette, accompanied by Governor De Witt Clinton’s son George W. Clinton, future state entomologist Asa Fitch, and physicist Joseph Henry (among others). Professor Eaton delivered a lecture in Rochester, sponsored by that city’s Chemical Class (which had been formed to create a lending library on HDT WHAT? INDEX
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mechanical subjects and would become the basis for the city’s Franklin Society).17
April 25, Tuesday: The stagecoach arrived at Troy, New York — and down got matriculating Rensselaer student Asa Fitch. Immediately this new student enlisted in that school’s Erie Canal expedition.
Louis Dwight reported that: Since October, 1824, I have visited most of the prisons on two routes, between Massachusetts and Georgia, and a large number of Prisons besides, in the New England States and New York ... and I have found melancholy testimony to establish one general fact, viz., That Boys are Prostituted to the Lust of old Convicts ... the Sin of Sodom is the Vice of Prisoners, and Boys are the Favorite Prostitutes. Nature and humanity cry aloud for redemption from this dreadful degradation.
April 26, Wednesday: A liberal constitution was promulgated in Portugal providing for a hereditary monarchy and bicameral cortes.
Commencement exercises were held at Rensselaer, New York. Among the speakers were professors Ebenezer Emmons, Addison Hulbert, H.H. Eaton, and Bennet F. Root. The school was offering “learning through experimental and demonstrative lectures.”
17. George W. Clinton’s JOURNAL OF A TOUR FROM ALBANY TO LAKE ERIE, BY THE ERIE CANAL, IN 1826. GEORGE W. CLINTON HDT WHAT? INDEX
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April 27, Thursday: Rensselaer professor Amos Eaton went to Albany, New York to arrange for the canal boat for his upcoming student field trip on the Erie Canal, the LaFayette.
In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 27th of 4th M 1826 / Our Moy [Monthly] Meeting was this day held at Portsmouth, to attend which I went out over night & lodged at Uncle Stantons — aunt Patty being very sick did not go, so I walked to Meeting & on my way stoped at Richd Sissons to see him — In the first Meeting Ruth Freeborn preached excellently —In the last Meeting we got through with some buisness which had been long on hand, particularly on application for Membership from our Preparative Meeting - which was not a very clear or satisfactory case at last — Dined at Richd Mitchells & rode Home with David Buffum in his carriage. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
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April 29, Saturday: Asa Fitch, a member of the Rensselaer field expedition group, studied the types of rock they would be encountering as they passed across New York.
King Pedro IV signed the constitutional charter and announced his intention to abdicate in favor of his infant daughter Maria da Gloria, if she was betrothed to his brother Miguel and Miguel accepted the new constitution.
A seriously ill Carl Maria von Weber attended the premiere of Bishop’s Alladin at Drury Lane. As he entered, the house rose. During the “Huntsmen’s Chorus” the audience whistled Weber’s chorus of the same name.
A farewell concert was given at Boylston Hall in Boston for Anton Philipp Heinrich.
April 30, Sunday: The Erie Canal boat LaFayette, hired in Albany, New York for Professor Amos Eaton’s Rensselaer field expedition, was towed to Troy. Asa Fitch helped maneuver the craft through the sloop lock. GEORGE W. CLINTON
In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 31[?] 4 M / Our Monthly Meeting was well attended & solid - Father Rodman concerned in a short testimony— Having something to attend too at Uncle Stantons before 27 Meeting & to make the way more clear to leave home I rode out in his waggon which was in town & got there by 3 OClock — after taking a dish of tea there I set out for home on foot & walked home RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
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May 1, Monday: At the Round Hill School in Northampton, George Bancroft and George Henry Bode signed the preface to the 2d edition of Edward Everett’s English translation of Professor Philip Karl Buttmann’s BUTTMANN’S GREEK GRAMMAR.
STRAßE PHILIPP BUTTMANN IN BERLIN IS NOT NAMED AFTER THIS PHILOLOGIST.
The Rensselaer field expedition on the Erie Canal needed to stand by for a day due to the large quantity of baggage and bedding that was being loaded onto their canal boat, the LaFayette.
Jonas Wheeler of Concord died at the age of 37.
JONAS WHEELER, son of Jotham Wheeler, was born February 9, 1789, and graduated [at Harvard College] in 1810. He read law with Erastus Root, Esq., of Camden, Maine, and settled in the profession in that town. He was justice of the peace, Colonel in the militia, delegate to form the constitution, a representative and a member of the Senate of Maine, of which he was President the two last years of his life. He died May 1, 1826, aged 37.18 HDT WHAT? INDEX
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May 2, Tuesday: Emperor Pedro I of Brazil waived his right to the Portuguese throne in favor of his daughter Maria de Gloria.
The United States recognized the Peruvian Republic.
After waiting for the loading of stove, utensils, crockery, the Amos Eaton Rensselaer field expedition got under way along the Erie Canal. The LaFayette made its way through the sloop lock at 11 AM, stopping in Troy, New York to onload Hezekiah Hulbert Eaton’s chemical apparatus. Timothy Dwight Eaton joined the party. Dinner was held at the foot of the nine-lock Waterford flight. Asa Fitch and others walked as far as Cohoes and then waited two hours for the boat to catch up. At tea Professor Eaton read out the rules of conduct and the schedule — wake at sunrise, breakfast at eight, dinner at 2, tea after boat stopping for the night. There were 24 members of this all-male (it goes without saying) expedition. The sleeping would be crowded so they created a tent on the afterdeck that could sleep 4. Taps not being in their curriculum, they would not get to bed until after midnight. Governor DeWitt Clinton’s son George W. Clinton was one of the participants. GEORGE W. CLINTON
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 2nd of 5th M 1826 / This Morning with my wife & others making a company of 21 in number - went on board the Packet for Greenwich to attend Quarterly Meeting we arrived before One OClock at Daniel Howlands - & After Dinner Uncle Peter Lawton & I took a Chaise & rode about four Miles to see John Casey who is now I thnk turned 87 Years of Age — he retained his looks remarakbly, his countenance fresh & not materially changed from what it was when I saw him last, 5 or 6 Years ago but his limbs quite debilitated, so that it was with difficulty he could walk about — In his mind there was the marks of former greatness, but, much reduced & even fallen. — he seemed glad to see us, & me in particular - he remains a Monument of warning to others, to take heed least they fall - my mind was humbled & grieved to see his situation, but I concluded it was best to go to see him. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
May 3, Wednesday: The Amos Eaton Rensselaer field expedition crossed the Niskayuna River on Alexander’s aqueduct. An unfastened window shutter on the boat was torn off on the side of the aqueduct. The captain was told he was responsible to the owner for any expenses due to accidents. They continued on to Schenectady, New York and stopped for dinner and the night. Four or five of the party slept in a nearby tavern.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 18. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
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4th day Close attendance of Meetings from 9 OC in the Morng till after 7 OC in the eveng. - Dined at Abigail Prouds & Lodged At Thos Howlands — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
May 4, Thursday: The Amos Eaton Rensselaer field expedition had a one-day layover. Classes were being given along the way. Dinner was at Auriesville, New York.
Confitebor tibi, Domine for solo voices, chorus and orchestra by Samuel Wesley was performed for the initial time, in the Argyll Rooms, London.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day Our public Meeting was favourd, & the buisness conducted in an orderly becoming manner - Dined at Saml Browns & then In company with Caleb Wheaton rode to Providence & got to the School House a little after Dark - found John well & glad to see me - Hannah staid in Greenwich to return home with friends tomorrow - I lodged at the School House & 6th day was much engaged at the School committee, we had a favourd opportunity in the Girls School, in which my mind was uncommonly enlarged, tho’ I said nothing — Again lodged at the School - 7th day met with the Trustees of O B Fund, which occupied the Forenoon, then rode to Providence town & Dined at Wm Jenkins’s & again in the Afternoon engaged at his house on a committee from the Meeting for Sufferings till near night & finding myself disappointed of returning home, went to Dorcas Browns to tea, & while there was informed that the Steam Boat Babcock had come up landed her Passengers & returned immediately. Benjamin Hadwin & Abigail Robinson came passengers - Abigail having a prospect of Smithfield Quarterly Meeting next week — lodged at Wm Jenkins & 1st day [Sunday] attended Meetings in Providence all Day - Dined at Wm Jenkins’s - & took tea & spent the eveng at Jos Anthonys lodged again at Wm Jenkins’s — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
May 5, Friday: The Rensselaer field expedition stopped at Fort Plain, New York and explored the creeks. They arrived at Little Falls on the Erie Canal at dark. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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May 6, Saturday: A building for the Senate of Brazil opened in Rio de Janeiro in the presence of Emperor Dom Pedro. It would be used for the following 98 years.
The Amos Eaton Rensselaer field expedition passed Herkimer, New York and German Flats, mooring for the night at Frankfort. GEORGE W. CLINTON
May 7, Sunday: The Rensselaer field expedition arrived at Utica, New York too late for morning services. Some of the party would attend afternoon services at the Episcopal church. Frances, a black woman, was engaged to cater for them all at $16 a day (this contract would cover all their food expenses).
In the Reverend Ezra Ripley’s handwriting in the Concord church’s records, there appears the following curious notation: The church tarried by the desire of the pastor, after the communion service, and heard the request, in writing, of our brothers and sisters, —John Voss and his wife, —David Hubbard, —Phebe Wheeler, —Martha Whiting, —(and others) — to be dismissed from this church and recommended to a Council which may be convened for the purpose of organizing them, with others, into a Church of Christ.... This request being sudden and unexpected to members of the church, it was thought best not to reply to the request without further consideration. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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What had happened? Deacon John White was leading a dissident group of religious reactionaries out of the church, to form one more to their own liking, to be known as the Trinitarian Congregationalist congregation. THE DEACONS OF CONCORD
May 8, Monday: The Rensselaer field expedition toured the American Revolution battlefield at Oriskany, New York. They stopped for the night at Lenox. GEORGE W. CLINTON
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day came home in Capt Waldrons Packet - This is a much longer time than I am usually from home at Q Meeting time. - but so it is I have something to do with most of Societys concerns, & I cannot get along as others can. — I feel the pressure of the various engagements I am under on account of Society - they fall on one who is weak & entirely unable to bear much, but I desire to do the best I can & leave the Issue to him who does not forsake in the needful time. — tho’ I may acknowledge my Faith & my patience are often brought to very close test RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
May 9, Tuesday: Professor Amos Eaton’s Rensselaer field expedition had breakfast at New Boston, New York, then continued along the Erie Canal to Chittenengo, where they toured the polytechnical school run by Mr. Yates. After dinner with the teachers in the dining hall they traveled to a nearby hill to examine samples of petrified wood. They spent the night in “Fuddletown” (Manlius).
May 10, Wednesday: The Rensselaer field expedition arrived at Salina (north Syracuse), New York, formed in the previous year. Asa Fitch visited the salt works. They continued on to Nine Mile Creek (Otisco). A bed- making committee was chosen.
May 11, Thursday: The Rensselaer field expedition had breakfast at Jordan, New York. Asa Fitch begins feeling unwell. Dinner was eaten at Byron. The LaFayette continued on to Montezuma. Erie Canal mile- boards now begin appearing, and this would continue all the way to Buffalo.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 11th of 5 M / Our Meeting was well attended & a solid & pretty comfortable time — The committee in care of Jamestown Meeting met & agreed to encourage a Meeting’s being held there in the middle of the week, which the members agreed too & is to be opened the 1st 5th day after Moy [Monthly] Meeting RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
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May 12, Friday: The Amos Eaton Rensselaer field expedition had breakfast at Clyde. Asa Fitch was feeling better. They stopped at Lyons for dinner. Professors Addison Hulbert and Bennet F. Root left the party to give lectures on botany and chemistry to local audiences. The party met Erie Canal commissioner Myron Holley. Supper was at Newark. They stopped at Palmyra, New York for the night.
May 13, Saturday: Professor Amos Eaton’s Rensselaer field expedition proceeded aboard the LaFayette along the Erie Canal in the direction of Rochester, New York.
May 14, Sunday: Professor Amos Eaton’s Rensselaer field expedition reached Rochester, New York. Professor Eaton predicted the town would fail to survive. GEORGE W. CLINTON
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 14th of 5th M 1826 / John Wilbour & Andrew Nichols attended our Morning Meeting which was large & favourd Andrew began the service in a short but well connected plain & pretty forcible testimony - then John commenced with the Scriptue “How much owest thou my Lord” which he improved well & I believe to the edification of the Meeting at large. — & concluded in humble earnest suplication. — they attended an appointed Meeting at Portsmouth, at the 4th Hour — Our Meeting in the Afternoon was pretty well attended & Silent — With my Wife & Sister Ruth sat the evening at Abigail Robinsons. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
May 15, Monday: Professor Amos Eaton’s Rensselaer field expedition visited the falls of the Genesee River, New York. The professor was lecturing on the rock strata when he was stricken with a fainting spell and began hallucinating. Receiving medical attention, he soon pulled himself back together.
May 16, Tuesday: The Rensselaer field expedition passed through the towns of Gates, Clarkson, and the unincorporated Brockport, spending the night at Holleysville (Holley), New York. Asa Fitch read the 12th and 13th cantos of Byron’s DON JUAN.
Maria Szymanowska gave her final concert in London. She would return to Warsaw.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: HDT WHAT? INDEX
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3rd day 16th of 5th M / Much affected about Noon with the News from Providence of the very sudden death of Our frd Dorcas Brown widow of Obadiah Brown - she was taken about 4 OC yesterday Afternoon in a Fit & lived till about 11 OC in the evening. —We have not heard the particulars, but that they are sudden & Awful is certain, an express having arrived in town this forenoon for Her Brother Benj Hadwen It has seemed very remarkable to me that early this Morning she was much on my mind, a subject of conversation between my wife & me at Breakfast table, & all along thro’ the forenoon she was occasionally in my thoughts & particularly about 10 minutes before I heard the news of her death I was thinking what a change her removal would make, & was casting in my mind the probability of her having prepared for it by making a Will, & some consequences of her having done or not done it, was very forcibly brought to view. — It also seems to me a little remarkable, that while I was in Providence last, My mind was specially drawn to make her a visit & a very pleasant one it was. I took tea & set the evening with her, & it did not seem an easy thing to come away in consequence of which my stay was prolonged, longer than common. - it seemed as if my love for her was renew’d in a manner, that seemed remarkable to me at the time — “In the midst of life we are in Death” We know not the Day or hour we may be called hence to be seen of men no more. — Her precious Father John Hadwen died equally sudden - the Day I well remember & his funeral — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
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May 17, Wednesday: Sigismund Thalberg gave his 1st public performance in London.
In Concord, the Middlesex Mutual Fire Insurance Company sold its 1st policy.
Amos Eaton’s Rensselaer field expedition passed through Newport (Albion), crossed over the highway arch, and spent the night at Middleport, New York. They were told of a 2-year-old who had recently drowned in the Erie Canal. Asa Fitch read cantos 14 and 15 of DON JUAN. Fitch described the countryside as “fertile and productive, yielding abundant crops, to repay the labors of the husbandman.”
The American people learned that in the previous year their government had entered into an agreement at Council Grove, Kansas with a group of people to the west, the Osage, called the “Kansas Tribe of Indians,” which would provide them with right-of-way for their new trail to Santa Fe:
“BLEEDING KANSAS” WHITE ON RED, RED ON WHITE HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
May 18, Thursday: The Rensselaer field expedition passed evidence of the newly-begun fruit industry. They examined flammable gas seeping out of the ground and named the local community Gasport. As they passed through Lockport, New York, they encountered local entrepreneurs marketing excavated stone from the Erie Canal. GEORGE W. CLINTON
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 18th of 5th M 1826 / Our Meeting was well attended, & several not members came in, supposing J Wilbour & A Nichols was to be there. — In the Preparative Meeting T Carr our new Member sat with us. — some little buisness occurd but none transacted on any consequence - A proposition was made & left for consideration, To either discontinue the public Meeting in the Middle of the week or hold it in six day, which occurs in the Yearly Meeting time RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
May 19, Friday: Professor Amos Eaton’s Rensselaer field expedition arrived at Manchester, New York, encountering 200 US troops en route from Sackets Harbor to Green Bay, Michigan. Several were under guard for desertion and disobedience. A prisoner count revealed one missing. He was soon spotted and recaptured. The Rensselaer party pressed on along the Erie Canal to view Niagara Falls. Asa Fitch’s expectations had been too great, and at the actual thingie he found himself underimpressed — some rocks above the falls were needed, in order to frame the scene more artistically. They descended the steps to the base of the cataract, and toured Goat Island.
May 20, Saturday: In the evening the group from Rensselaer walked along the shore of Lake Erie in upstate New York. Professor Amos Eaton offered a recapitulation of the expedition. GEORGE W. CLINTON
May 21, Sunday: After the worship services, several of the members of the Rensselaer field expedition hiked out to a native village. Asa Fitch described log huts “much warmer than some I have seen inhabited by white people.... I had a short conversation with one of the Indians, who could speak English. Only a few could even though they lived among whites.... Most, if not all, however, know the meaning of the words whiskey, tobacco, etc. Dress of some very fine.”
The project of separation of a group of the parishioners of the Concord church led by the Reverend Ezra Ripley into a separate Church of Christ was again considered, and this time, reluctantly, it was approved.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 21st of 5 M / John Wilbour & Andrew Nichols has been engaged in visiting the families in Our preparative Meeting. I have been egaged with them a part of the time, much to my own satisfaction, - believing their services have been acceptable & HDT WHAT? INDEX
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useful — Andrew went home yesterday Afternoon, & left John to attend our Meeting today & finish a few visits remaining - Father Rodman has been his conductor mostly — John was much favoured in both our meetings - his services were sound & edifying, & quite extensive. -I walked out to D Buffums where I left him to lodge. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
May 22, Monday: The cornerstone of a church for Concord’s Trinitarian Congregationalists was laid.
The Amos Eaton Rensselaer field expedition walked along a Lake Erie beach, viewing 5-foot waves. GEORGE W. CLINTON
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 22 of 5 M / John Wilbour after setting in our family this Morning (which to us was a sweet opportunity) crossed the ferry to Connanicut where he has appointed a Meeting at 2 OC this Afternoon & intends visiting the few families on the Island. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
May 25, Thursday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 25th of 5 M / Our Moy [Monthly] Meeting this day held in Town was Silent & to me a low time. — The buisness conducted in the last was pretty well resulted, but great want of life on my part. — — we had several of our friend to dine with us Vizt B Freeborn, Z Chase G Dennis Asa Sherman - & Eleanor & Ann Lawton.— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
The Reverend Waldo Emerson’s 23d birthday. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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The widower Philip Leidy remarried with Christiana Taliana, a cousin of his deceased wife Catherine Mellick Leidy.
The Rensselaer school’s Erie Canal expedition left Troy aboard the LaFayette left Buffalo for the return trip. Professor Amos Eaton and the expedition crossed the mouth of “Tonnewanta” (Tonawanda) Creek, and spent the night at Lockport, New York.
Giacomo Meyerbeer got married with his cousin Minna Mosson in Berlin. They immediately departed for Paris, where he would work on a new opera.
Cospaia was divided between Tuscany and the Papal States.
Per the journal of Albert Gallatin’s son James as recorded in THE DIARY OF JAMES GALLATIN: I am torn both ways. I know I could be of the greatest use to father. It is impossible to take our child at his age across the ocean, as the discomforts, particularly where food is concerned, are so great. Josephine is quite willing for me to go, in fact urges me to do so. I will leave the matter entirely in father’s hands.
After her 2d appearance in Chepachet, Rhode Island Little Bett, The Learned Elephant was being walked out of town when she was executed by a broadside of gunfire from shooters concealed in a grist mill on the Chepachet River. Her keeper had made the mistake of bragging to the yokels that her tough hide was impenetrable to bullets. Her hide would be shipped to the Boston Museum and would wind up being exhibited by Phineas Taylor Barnum at the American Museum in New-York. Four years later, seven of the local residents would be found responsible for this incident at the bridge and be required to pay $1,500 in damages to Hackaliah Bailey, an ancestor of the Bailey of Barnum & Bailey Circus — and two of them would get expelled from the local chapter of the Masonic Order. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
May 26, Friday: Carl Maria von Weber’s song From Chindara’s Warbling Fount I Come J.308 to words of Moore was performed for the initial time, in London. This was his final composition. The composer was too ill to finish the accompaniment so he improvised it as it was performed. Ignaz Moscheles would later write down what he remembers of Weber’s interpolation. After the concert, Weber collapsed on a sofa. A mustard plaster would be applied to his chest.
Professor Amos Eaton set a goal for the remainder of the Rensselaer field expedition journey of 30 miles a day along the Erie Canal. They reached Gasport to find that their name for the settlement was already appearing on signboards. Moving on to Middleport, New York they notice an abundant harvest along the way. GEORGE W. CLINTON
May 27, Saturday: The Amos Eaton Rensselaer field expedition spent the night at Newport (Albion), New York. Asa Fitch described the citizens as “about as sassy, indecent, vulgar and dirty set of inhabitants as we have yet met with.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
May 28, Sunday: Arriving in Rochester, New York the Amos Eaton Rensselaer field expedition attended Presbyterian services. The naturalist Samuel Constantine Rafinesque joined the party. Some of the group spent the evening at the Canal Hotel.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 28th of 5 M / In the Morning Father Rodman delivered a solid good testimony, attended with life - Silent in the Afternoon - Set the evening with Abigail Robinson RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
May 29, Monday: The Amos Eaton Rensselaer field expedition visited the Lower Falls, New York with Professor Constantine Rafinesque. They viewed a perfect rainbow, and noted that the river was lower than before. A number of them collected wild geraniums, which in this eastern part of the state are rare.
May 30, Tuesday: Professor Amos Eaton and the Rensselaer field expedition passed through Pittsford, New York. Asa Fitch left the group briefly to visit friends. The party collected plants in a marsh at Palmyra. George Clinton walked in his sleep, wakening the party in middle of the night.
Bianca e Gernando, a melodramma by Vincenzo Bellini to words of Gilardoni after Roti, was performed for the initial time, in Teatro San Carlo, Naples before the royal family on the nameday of King Ferdinando. This would receive 25 performances during the season and would later be staged as Bianca e Fernando.
Carl Maria von Weber made his final public appearance, at a benefit for Mary Anne Paton, in London.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 30th of 5 M / My feelings this morning a little after 9 OC were shocked with the occurrence of a daughter of Christian Ellery Jumping out of a garret window from the house occupied by Wm Tilley & owned by George Mason. She killed herself almost instantly, - her name was Cornelia Harding wife of Albert Harding of Providence here on a visit to her Sister RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
May 31, Wednesday: Breakfast was eaten at Newark, New York. A mosquito swarm attacked along the Erie Canal. The students built fires on board the boat to ward them off. GEORGE W. CLINTON
June 1, Thursday: Amos Eaton’s Rensselaer field expedition reached Otisco, New York.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
5th day 1st of 6th M 1826 / Our Meeting was small, but solid & silent- I am thoughtful & concerned about our approaching Yearly Meeting it always is a weight & burden on my mind, but I have also always or nearly always found strength sufficient to the day — it however now seems more like giving out than common. —What a day it is in our Society, the burden bearers have fallen on strange times, defection in principle seems to be spreading far & wide, & great pains taken among the disaffected to discriminate their doctrine which is tantamount with Deism. — It is said some of these are expected here. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
June 2, Friday: Le timide, ou Le nouveau seducteur, an opera comique by Daniel Francois Esprit Auber to words of Scribe and Saintine, was performed for the initial time, in Theatre Feydeau, Paris.
The Rensselaer field expedition reached Salina, New York. Professor Amos Eaton gave public lectures on chemistry and natural history. GEORGE W. CLINTON
June 3, Saturday: The Rensselaer field expedition reached Manlius, New York. Asa Fitch reported that allegedly it had once been named Fuddletown, from the first inhabitants, who were a drunken, carousing set of people. The present inhabitants seemed not all that drunken or carousing, and were zealous to obliterate the former name. The group moved on to Green Lake, where they encountered downpours. To entertain the students, Professor Samuel Constantine Rafinesque sang French, Scottish and Italian airs.
June 4, Sunday: The Rensselaer field expedition reached Rome, New York.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 4th of 6th M / Our Meeting was well attended & in the Morning the London Epistel was [read] by Brother D Rodman - Silent in the Afternoon. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
June 5, Monday: One day before his planned return home to Dresden, servants in the house of Sir George Smart, London, called to wake their guest, Carl Maria von Weber. When they were unable to rouse him, they broke open the door and found the composer dead in his bed, at the age of 39 years, the victim of the effects of tuberculosis.
The Rensselaer field expedition spent the night in Utica, New York. GEORGE W. CLINTON
The Trinitarian Congregationalist Church of Concord was authorized by an ecclesiastical council. Initially, this church would have 16 members.
June 6, Tuesday: A cold storm struck out of the east. Most of the students of the Rensselaer field expedition remained within the cabin of their Erie Canal boat. Breakfast was eaten at Frankfort, New York. They reached German Flats by nightfall.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 8th of 6 M / Our Meeting today was small as it usually is the fifth day previous to Yearly Meeting — It was low as to life - Oh for a quickning & renewal of life - how feeble do I feel at the Approach of Yearly Meeting — oppressed with many discouragements RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
June 8, Thursday: At noon the Rensselaer field expedition passed the mouth of Schoharie Creek, New York. The Erie Canal boats were pulled across by cable. GEORGE W. CLINTON
June 9, Friday: The Rensselaer field expedition arrived at Niskayuna, New York.
June 10, Saturday: The Rensselaer field expedition passed through the Waterford Locks of the Erie Canal, arriving at Troy, New York, the completion of their adventure. GEORGE W. CLINTON HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1827
In Rochester, New York, the population neared 10,000. A platform was built over the Genesee River to provide space for a farmer’s market. Alexander Street and Pennsylvania Street (South Union Street) were completed between the Erie Canal and East Avenue. The city had eight boat basins on that canal: Warehouse, Washington, Fisher’s Screw Dock, Fitzhugh’s, Ely’s, Child’s, Hill’s (Johnson’s), and Gilbert’s. The house of hardware merchant Ebenezer Watts was completed. An African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church was being erected at Ford and Spring streets. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
The Oneida Institution opened on the bank of the Erie Canal in Whitesboro near Utica, New York under the leadership of one George W. Gale who “having impaired his own health through hard study had regained it through farm work.” It may have been an informal sort of institution until the Oneida Presbytery took it over and appointed Gale its 1st president.19 At that time it was being intended as a school for the preparation of Presbyterian ministers. According to Benjamin Thomas’s THEODORE WELD (Rutgers UP, 1950, page 18), one of the students at this Whitesboro “manual labor institution” would be Theodore Dwight Weld.
William Aspinwall Tappan would attend the Academy of the Oneida Institution under “Monitor-General” Weld. Lewis Tappan or Arthur Tappan would, among others, sponsor a “Society for Promoting Manual Labor in Literary Institutions” and send Weld to the west on salary to “collect data from which might be deduced guiding principles for the most successful union of manual labor with study; to ascertain to what extent the manual labor system was suited to conditions in the West; and to compile a journal of his findings” (Thomas, page 31). After losing his journal of observations in a near-fatal carriage accident, Weld would never resume
19. Bertram Wyatt-Brown, in his LEWIS TAPPAN AND THE EVANGELICAL WAR AGAINST SLAVERY, 1997 LSU paperback edition of 1969 Case Western Reserve U original, page 352 in “Bibliographic Essay,” has termed Thomas’s book “a short, lively life of the great antislavery orator, though it accepts uncritically the anti-Garrisonian interpretations popular at the time of its composition.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
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it. He would apparently think of himself more as a missionary of manual labor education than as any kind of mere investigator. He would interview educators and collected facts, but primarily what he what he would do would be make speeches and promote the cause — until in the late 1830s he would burn out and go into semi- retirement. “It sounds as though he may well have helped ignite a grassroots movement rather than promote the ends, directly, of the “Society for Promoting...” (L.F. Anderson, “The Manual Labor School Movement,” Educational Review XLVI, pages 369-386).
Donald G. Tewksbury’s THE FOUNDING OF AMERICAN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR (Teachers College, Columbia U, 1932; 1965 facsimile reprint, pages 28-54) lists colleges founded before the Civil War. It lists Wabash Manual Labor College, Indiana Baptist Manual Labor Institute (later Franklin College), and Knox Manual Labor College (later Knox college). HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1828
An investigation of the accounts of the Erie Canal construction project having cleared his name, the property of Myron Holley was restored to him by the State of New York.
April 1, Tuesday: The Erie Canal opened for the season.
April 2, Wednesday: The packet boat Niagara was the first boat of the season to pass Syracuse, heading west on the Erie Canal. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1829
Colonel William Leete Stone’s FROM NEW YORK TO NIAGARA—JOURNAL OF A TOUR, IN PART BY CANAL, IN 1829.
David Hosack’s MEMOIR OF DEWITT CLINTON, WITH AN APPENDIX CONTAINING NUMEROUS DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS OF HIS LIFE AND OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE CANALS.
The Pioneer Line, running packet boats on the Erie Canal on every day but the Sabbath, failed.
The Oswego Canal connected the Erie Canal with the east end of Lake Ontario.
The New York State legislature approved funding for a Chemung Canal linking the Chemung River to the Erie Canal.
Rochester packet boatbuilder Seth C. Jones launched the 15/20-ton Superior on the Erie Canal. The boat had a 7-foot-high cabin decorated with scenic paintings by artist Daniel Steele. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
November 6, Friday: After his Niagara leaps, the 22-year-old Sam Patch, who had become the “Evel Knievel” of the century, had hurried to Rochester, New York, the midpoint of the Erie Canal, to fulfill a jumping
commitment before the river there froze. He jumped the Upper Genesee Cataract privately for practice, witnessed by his companion Joe Cochrane. Then on this day, Patch had been advertised to make his 99-foot leap at 2PM, and showed up a little before 3PM, accompanied by his pet bear cub. Of the three persons who had been accidentally swept over the brink of the Genesee Falls, one in March 1826, one in January 1827, and one in November 1827, only one had been able to survive the plunge. The crowd was variously estimated at 6,000 to 10,000. There would be a report, which evidently was untrue, that: The performance was not yet concluded, as he returned from below, having a good-sized black bear with him, who seemed unwilling to go over where Sam did. After much wrestling Sam finally forced him to do so. The bear made several promiscuous turns, then sat bolt upright in mid-air until he struck the water stern first, from which he soon struck for shore. The collections from the crowd were disappointing, and he would deliberately pick the unlucky date of Friday the 13th to repeat the feat for a larger audience.
Felix Mendelssohn left his London lodgings for the 1st time in six weeks. He had been laid up since his accident of September 17.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 6th of 11th M 1829 / The committee was large harmonious & comfortable - Visted the Schools & found them promising - in both several encouraging testimonies were delivered & in the boys Our frd Alice Rathbone was engaged in Solemn Supplication. In the eveng attended the Trustees Meeting at Moses Browns house — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL HDT WHAT? INDEX
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November 7, Saturday: Le dilettante d’Avignon, an opera comique by Fromental Halevy to words of Hoffman and the composer’s brother Leon, was performed for the initial time, in the Theatre Ventadour, Paris. This was Halevy’s 1st real success.
Carpenter’s union president Ebenezer Ford was elected to the New York State Assembly (the 1st labor leader voted into public office).
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day 7 of 11th M / Attended the Meeting for Sufferings. —at this Meeting James Scott requested that the Autograph Manuscript of his late father Job Scott might be delivered to him - the Meeting appointed a committee to inspect them & report their judgement thereon - I was one of them & After Meeting we met again at Moses Browns & enterd on the Service & read the whole of that part of it which he kept by way of journal while in England. comparing the Printed with the written journal. & I must acknowledge - I was never more Struck with the wisdom of our order in committing Manuscripts to the Meeting for Sufferings -for parts of it was surpressed which can never do any good & if they are ever published by other hands will be a discredit to those who suffer it to be done & no honour to the Memory of Job Scott - we spent from 3 OC PM till 9 OC in the eveng on the review — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
November 8, Sunday: Grassy Plain, Connecticut country store clerk Phineas Taylor Barnum and Charity “Chairy” Hallett were married in the New-York home of her uncle Nathan Beers.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 8th of 11th M 1829 / At our Morning Meeting Our fr Rowland Greene attended & borw a lively & pertinent testimony. — We were Silent in the Afternoon RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1830
Students from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute made a 2d study tour on the Erie Canal.
May 9, Sunday: The Rochester-built steam-powered canal boat Novelty, recently towed on the Erie Canal to Utica to be fitted out with its engines, passed through to Lake Ontario on the Oswego Canal. STEAM ENGINES STEAMBOATS
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 9th of 5th M 1830 / Silent Meeting in the Morng In the Afternoon Wm Almy was here & bore a good Gospel testimony we had a number of visitors & among them George Benson & Jos Anthony. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
July 13, Tuesday: Recent heavy rains had caused a breach in the Erie Canal in Bushnell’s Basin near Pittsford’s Grand Embankment; a culvert had given way a mile and a half west of Pittsford and damage had been done at Fairport. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1832
Herman Melvill’s father died in Albany, New York, a failure at every business venture in which he had ever taken part, leaving nothing but debts for his extended family to deal with (however, many families in the US were far less well provided for and far less well connected than the beleaguered Melvill widow and her young charges). It would be after the father’s death that the family would change its name from Melvill to Melville. This adoption of the Scottish spelling would add to the aristocratic aura of the name while distancing the family’s next generation somewhat from the unsavory reputation that the previous generation had acquired on account of various secret credit New-York business dealings and debt abandonments.
William James, father of Henry James, Sr., died. Having started out with a modest dry-goods and tobacco store, James had wound up owning his own savings bank. After being a member of the Erie Canal Commission and a founder of Union College, at his death in this year he was worth some $3,000,000 (all of which he was forced to leave behind him). There was but one wealthier businessman in America: the New-York landlord John Jacob Astor.
Primitive artist May Keys painted Lockport on the Erie Canal. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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April 16, Monday: George T. Perry announced a new fleet of packet boats headquartered in Utica – the Philadelphia, New Kentucky, Naiad, and Nerid– for service on the Erie Canal between Syracuse and Schenectady.
Giacomo Meyerbeer departed Paris to aid in the production of Robert le diable in London.
April 19, Thursday: Giacomo Meyerbeer arrived in London to aid in the production of Robert le diable.
April 24, Tuesday: The Auburn Canal and Rail Road Company, capitalized at $150,000, is organized, to connect Auburn with the Erie Canal (this wouldn’t ever be dug).
Authorization, by the New York legislature, of the New York and Erie Rail Road. De Witt Clinton, Jr. would make the preliminary survey.
The Rochester and Tonawanda Railroad was chartered. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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September 16, Sunday: Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote his mother in Salem from Burlington, Vermont, after visiting the White Mountains of New Hampshire (known as the time as “the Switzerland of the United States” and a contemporary landscape symbol of our local virtues of freedom and independence).
He had visited Crawford Notch. At this point he was considering going on north into Canada — and in fact for all we know he may have made it as far as Montréal before turning back and heading along the Erie Canal route for Niagara Falls in his search for the picturesque and/or sublime. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Between this date and September 28th Hawthorne would pass through Rochester, New York, where he would be informed by locals that Sam Patch was alive, having hidden behind the Genesee waterfall after his leap. To obtain proper atmosphere, he would arrange to view these famous deadly falls at dusk and alone: How stern a moral may be drawn from the story of poor Sam Patch! Why do we call him a madman or a fool, when he has left his memory around the falls of the Genesee, more permanently than if the letters of his name had been hewn into the forehead of the precipice? Was the leaper of cataracts more mad or foolish than other men who throw away life, or misspend it in pursuit of empty fame, and seldom so triumphant as he? That which he won is as invaluable as any except the unsought glory, spreading like the rich perfume of richer fruit from various and useful deeds. Thus musing, I lifted my eyes and beheld the spires, warehouses, and dwellings of Rochester.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 16 of 9 M / My dear wife attended the Morning Meeting but found herself so unwell that she did not think best to attempt it in the Afternoon & Dr Tobey was called in. — She seemed better in the eveng RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
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September 28, Friday: A printed certificate handed out after a tour under Table Rock of the Niagara Falls informs us that on this date Nathaniel Hawthorne “passed behind the Great Falling Sheet of Water to Termination Rock.” The rock platform overhead, which once projected out 50 feet over the cliff-base path, had
previously collapsed,20 and so, although it was still possible to pass behind the water, it really was no longer possible for the intrepid lip-walker overhead to “feel as if suspended in the open air.” Hawthorne was viewing the location at which Sam Patch the Yankee jumper had made his famous death-defying leaps, prior to going on to his death in an attempt to similarly survive a leap down the Genesee Falls in Rochester, New York. In Hawthorne’s semi-autobiographical “My Visit to Niagara,” the narrator purchases a twisted cane made by a member of the Tuscarora tribe and adorned with images of a snake and a fish. Since he refers to this walking stick as his “pilgrim’s staff,” and since our author evidently wasn’t all that impressed by this culmination to his westering journey, Elizabeth McKinsey, commenting in NIAGARA FALLS: ICON OF THE AMERICAN SUBLIME (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985, page 192), considers that such a staff might have been “suggestive of a knowledge of good and evil” as it “might facilitate a fall from the innocence of anticipation into experience and knowledge.” (Huh? I have no idea what she is talking about. Personally, I’d rather aim this analysis in the direction of Henry Thoreau’s parable of the stick/stock of the Artist of Kouroo, since there is every possibility that back home in Concord later, Thoreau would be informed of the history of this curiosity walking stick/pilgrim’s staff.)21
December 1, Saturday: The Ohio and Erie Canal was completed, open to the Ohio River.
20. According to Vanderwater’s THE TOURIST guidebook, preserving intact (of course) the sensational memory of a projection no longer in actual existence, “Table Rock, which projects about 50 feet, is generally considered the most eligible place for viewing the falls on the Canada side. The descent from the rock is by circular steps, which are enclosed; at the foot of these stairs commences the passage under the great sheet of water where visitants are supplied with dresses and a guide. The farthest approachable distance is Termination Rock, 153 feet from Table Rock.” 21. Presumably Hawthorne had gotten to Niagara by continuing along the route of the Erie Canal, and presumably this is about as far west as he would get in his search for the picturesque/sublime. We are, however, lacking in evidence for these travels, other than what we can extrapolate from various comments at various points in his fictions and in his semi-autobiographical jottings. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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December 3, Monday: Andrew Jackson was re-elected President of the United States of America.
December 4, Tuesday: French forces began bombarding the Dutch citadel of Antwerp (it would surrender on the 23d). HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1833
Richard Weston’s A JOURNEY WEST OF UTICA IN THE MID-1830S.
The 3-mile Carthage Railroad was founded, to connect the Erie Canal aqueduct with the village of Carthage.
The family of Martha L. White, en route to Michigan via the Erie Canal, was delayed for a couple of days at Albany because of record spring rains. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1834
David Wilkie’s A CANAL JOURNEY IN 1834.
The walls of the Erie Canal lock at Tonawanda were raised a foot to bring the river water closer to the canal’s level. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1835
Nathan Roberts was made Chief Engineer for the enlargement of the Erie Canal. John Jervis became a consultant during the enlargement of the eastern division. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1836
Work began on the Illinois and Michigan Canal, to connect Chicago with the Illinois River. The 1st grain shipment from Chicago reached Buffalo, New York, to be shipped down the Erie Canal.
New Jersey’s Morris Canal was extended to the Hudson River.
An Erie Canal boat arrived in Rochester, New York carrying the 1st locomotive for the Tonawanda Railroad.
36,000 tons of goods were transhipped via the Erie Canal at Buffalo.
When speculators promoting a canal, between the Erie Canal at Lyons and Lake Ontario, took land belonging to the Shakers at Sodus Bay’s Alasa Farms, the 125-member community moved by sled and wagon to the Williamsburgh (Groveland) area and for their new settlement used the native American name for that site — Sonyea.
Thomas S. Woodcock’s NEW YORK TO NIAGARA described his journey on the Erie Canal.
Construction began on a new Erie Canal aqueduct over the Genesee River.
The Chenango Canal joined the Erie Canal. Other improvements on the Erie Canal were begun, for instance to enlarge that canal’s channel to 7'X70' and its locks to 18'X110'.
A company was formed to dig a canal at 106th Street in northern Manhattan for a marble quarry (the project would be abandoned when this marble was found inferior). HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1837
Contracts were let for construction of the Genesee Valley Canal.
The Chenango Canal went into operation.
The Chemung Canal connecting Binghamton with the Erie Canal at Utica was completed.
3,955 boats arrived in the lake harbor at Buffalo, New York during this year and 4,755 boats went through the Erie Canal.
At Rochester, New York, a wall was built along the Genesee River through downtown. Construction began on a new Erie Canal aqueduct over the Genesee River. A public market building was erected on Market Street (formerly Mason Street), which was then renamed Front Street. Wealthy St. Louis fur trader Henry Shaw built a house for his parents. Mayor Jonathan Child began building a home on South Washington Street. Senator HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Daniel Webster spoke in the Court House square. The city’s first murder occurred. Louis Seyle’s fire engine manufacturing company at Brown’s Race was destroyed by fire. After his store burned, Austin Steward relocated to Canandaigua, New York to begin, assisted by his daughter, a school for colored children, and there he began work on his TWENTY TWO YEARS A SLAVE AND FORTY YEARS A FREEMAN; EMBRACING A CORRESPONDENCE OF SEVERAL YEARS, WHILE PRESIDENT OF WILBERFORCE COLONY, LONDON, CANADA WEST.
Revival meetings were held. A Rochester resident, Sam Scott, began to attempt a repris of the jumping career of Sam Patch.
(This Rochester man’s show-biz career would come to an abrupt completion in London: while attempting to HDT WHAT? INDEX
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perform a public stunt with a rope he accidentally hanged himself.)
HANGING Crimes Punishable by Death in England:
Year Number
1800 150
1837 10
May: Bronson Alcott visited the Emersons in Concord. THE ALCOTT FAMILY
The first locomotive for the Rochester & Tonawanda Railroad Company arrived by boat on the Erie Canal. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
May 14, Sunday: A depression began –one of the worst in the nation’s history– as banks of New-York and Boston suspended payment in specie. In the midst of the economic malaise, Waldo Emerson confided to his Journal:
The humblebee & the pine warbler seem to me the proper objects of attention in these disastrous times.
He wrote a poem, “The Humble-Bee.” The Erie Canal Company would be able to get away with paying its workmen a mere $0.75 for a workday of 18 hours. The piecework rate for binding a woman’s kid buskin shoe at home would fall to $0.03 and at rates like that it would take a desperate mother, doing piecework in her home, a truly awesome length of time to earn a dollar.22
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 14th of 5th M / Silent Meetings all day - In the Morning it was pretty full & in the Afternoon thin as usual -both solid seasons RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
June 27, Tuesday: New York made its initial payment on Erie Canal Enlarged Lock #18 at Cohoes.
22. To really appreciate this, you have to have come from this sort of a background. I grew up in a single-parent household, for instance, in Indiana in the 1940s and 1950s, and when Mother came home to our two-room flat from schoolteaching, after supper she and my little sister Carolyn and I would sit around two laundry tubs full of small pieces from a local factory, in Mother’s bedroom, and spend the evening taking items out of one tub, doing something to them, and pitching them into the other tub. The rate of pay per piece, which constantly varied and which constantly had to be re-negotiated –bargained over with well-off people who knew desperation when they saw it and took advantage of it in every possible manner– was what made the difference between having lunch money to take with me to school (this was 75 cents per school week, payable if I had it in one lump sum on a Monday morning), and not being allowed to eat with the other children in the lunchroom, but being forced instead to bring a mashed potato sandwich from home and eat it alone out in the swings of the schoolyard. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1838
The Jordan Level of the Erie Canal, between Montezuma and Camillus, was straightened, shortening the stretch by a mile and saving $18,323.72 in cost.
The state floated a bond issue of $4,000,000 for enlarging the Erie Canal.
The New York registry of canal boats was completed.
The Melvilles moved to Lansingburgh in upstate New York, where they would depend upon the assistance of a wealthy relative. Herman Melville began to study engineering and surveying, hoping for a job on the new Erie Canal (but no such job would materialize). Filling in his time, Melville became involved in a public namecalling contest with another young gentleman. They exchanged “silly and brainless loon” for “Ciceronian baboon,” “stranger to veracity” for “moral Ethiopian,” “narrow-minded and jealous” for “child of the devil, full of all subtility and all mischief,” etc. Melville won — if anyone could be said to win at this sort of game. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1839
A 650-foot-deep salt well was drilled alongside the enlarged Erie Canal at Montezuma, New York.
Junius peppermint farmer Peter Hill moved to Lyons, New York, having purchased property at the future site of Erie Canal Lock E-56. Over a dozen local companies had risen up to haul passengers and freight on the Erie Canal. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1840
Henry R. Worthington invented a direct-acting steam pump, installing this on his canal boat (after a few seasons, pressure from established boatmen would force his paddlewheeler off the Erie Canal).
Wayne County peppermint farmer Peter Hill began dismantling his private grocery building to move it out of the way of the Erie Canal enlargement.
Also, in this year, Earl Trumbull constructed the first all-iron truss using catenary rod reinforcements in the USA, to carry a road 70 feet over the Erie Canal at Frankford, New York. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1841
Due to the influence of the Erie Canal New-York’s exports had become three times greater than those of Boston! In the period since that canal’s completion personal property had increased fourfold, manufacturing had increased threefold, and the number of businessmen had increased fourfold.
Macedon’s Erie Canal Lock #60 was built.
Concrete work was completed on Erie Canal Enlarged Lock #18 at Cohoes.
The Schoharie Creek Aqueduct of the Erie Canal was completed.
Wayne County peppermint farmer Peter Hill moved his private grocery building out of the way of the Erie Canal enlargement.
Many Rochester townspeople got upset because enlargement of the Erie Canal necessitated 20 to 50 men to labor on Sundays.
Construction of the 2d all-metal bridge truss in the USA, spanning 82 feet over the Erie Canal in Utica, New- York. The patent of Squire Whipple’s bowstring truss of cast and wrought iron marked the beginning of a new American industry, the manufacture of iron bridges, in which Squire Whipple would be a major player.
BRIDGE DESIGN HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1842
The 1st locomotive for the Auburn and Rochester Railroad was delivered by canal boat.
When New York ran out of money as a result of the 1837 panic, a “Stop and Tax Law” halted all canal construction for the next five years. The Jordan Level of the Erie Canal, between Montezuma and Camillus, had been almost completed when work was halted by this crisis, but the new Erie Canal aqueduct over the Genesee River at Rochester was functional. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
April 20, Wednesday: Water was let into Lock #18 of the Enlarged Erie Canal at Cohoes, which was following a new route (the old route would be sold to the Cohoes Company as a power canal).
John Brown wrote from New Albany, Pennsylvania to Thomas Matthews of Baltimore. He would post this letter on the following day:
“Esteamed Friend I recived A letter from Beulah stating that she is in want of Money to pay her debts and George owes her and she can not get it from him I wrote to her to let the know the amount and if George wold pay her out of his money I am willing that he shold du it for I belive he will never save a sufficiency to pay his board as long as he has any thing in our hands She wants one hundred dollars Informed her that if George Did not owe her that much I wold give an order on the for the balance I wrote to the in answer to one that I Recived from the but I have Recived no Answer please write on the recipt of this Times are dul here and people Braking Daily produce Low Money scarce and nothing that I can see to Make them better tharefore we must HDT WHAT? INDEX
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wait the Iou with patiens With Respect John Brown Thos Matthews”
April 21, Thursday: The Erie Canal’s Lock #18 was opened to general traffic. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1843
Presumably following the example set by Bronson Alcott, Henry Thoreau began to refuse to pay his Massachusetts poll tax levied on all males of militia age (between 20 and 70). According to the US Bureau of the Census’s HISTORICAL STATISTICS OF THE UNITED STATES (District of Columbia, 1975, Volume I, page 163), the $1.50 poll tax of Thoreau’s day was approximately one percent of the annual earnings of a New England farm laborer. (This accords well with my own rule of thumb, that in 1842 a one-cent coin was handled almost exactly as we now, a century and a half later, handle a one-dollar bill.) An able-bodied male laborer’s wages on the Erie Canal fell from $0.88 in 1837 to $0.75 in 1843, for a full 18-hour day.
An able-bodied trained female seamstress with good eyesight could make between $0.31 and $0.38 per day, depending on how skilled she was and how long per day she was able to free herself of her other domestic duties, such as washing the family clothing by hand and caring for children, and devote herself to this meticulous work. But we should not be distracted by the fact that $1.50 then is $150 now, for Thoreau’s point was not over the amount of the tax but the uses to which it would be put by the state, and the allegation that in this republic there was no other way effectively to prevent those uses.
Of course the less they were forced to pay the laborers, the better things got. In this year 2,136 boats accessed the Erie Canal. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1844
The enlarged Erie Canal opened to traffic in the Rome, New York area.
The first Erie Canal bridge over Rochester’s Exchange Street was built (42 of the new and larger canal boats were built in Rochester).
April: One of the new Erie Canal boats built at Rochester, New York was able to carry a 75-ton load — a new record. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1845
The new Jordan Level of the Erie Canal, between Montezuma and Camillus, went into operation. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1846
William H. Seymour and Dayton S. Morgan opened a factory on the Erie Canal, at Brockport, New York, to make McCormick reapers. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1847
August: Sir George Back returned from his honeymoon in Italy to take an active part in the preparation of expeditions in search of Sir John Franklin. He would serve with a number of other Arctic veterans on the Arctic council which advised the Admiralty about preparing search expeditions. THE FROZEN NORTH
At about this point the sailor William Jackman emigrated from Liverpool to New-York aboard the Queen, Captain McLean, and then, after a trip up the Hudson River and on the Erie Canal (there were 2,725 boats paying a passage along this waterway during this year), remarried with Jennett Nelson Scott whom he had met aboard the Queen, probably in Orleans County, New York (the bride had been born on November 2, 1825 in Scotland, and would die on April 14, 1897 in Kinnic, Wisconsin; this union would produce twelve children). HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1848
May: Ann Leah Fox Fish, piano-teaching older sister of Maggie Fox and Kate Fox, learning of the rapping goings- on in Hydesville from a reading of the Rochester, New York Daily American, took the Erie Canal packet boat from Rochester to Newark and went directly to her brother David’s Hydesville home, where she talked to her sisters — and got them to confess their secret, as well as how they were producing the rappings. SPIRITUALISM To make some money and become famous, the sisters of course became co-conspirators. Anything’s better than having to work for a living, right? HDT WHAT? INDEX
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July 26, Wednesday: The new enlarged lock on New York’s Erie Canal at Tonawanda, along the south side of the original lock, was put into service. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1849
Construction began on Van R. Richmond’s Montezuma Aqueduct, carrying the Enlarged Erie Canal over the Seneca River.
The family of William Jackman departed from Orleans County, New York, taking the Erie Canal to Buffalo and there boarding a lake steamer for Milwaukee. They would re-settle on a quarter acre in Spring Dale Township near Madison, Wisconsin.
Captain David P. Mapes arrived in an area of the Wisconsin Territory23 with a “silver creek weaving its way through Wisconsin’s rolling hills.” He would build a grist mill atop one of these rolling hills and, with John Scott Horner who owned land nearby, would suggest that the newly created settlement be named “Ripon” in honor of the English cathedral city of Ripon in beautiful Yorkshire, which had been his ancestral home. For more than a decade, Mapes would labor to develop his community: building a flour mill and a public house, donating lots to prospective settlers who would agree to establish places of business on the square, obtaining railroad trackage south to Milwaukee and north to the Wolf River, and persuading the Federal Government to move the post office from the nearby community of Ceresco to Ripon. The first lot would be given to E.L. Northrup, who would erect Ripon’s first store. After 1850, Ripon, having a mill, hotel, post office, blacksmith-shop and several stores, would attract waves of new settlers. For two years, a rivalry would flourish between Mapes and Warren Chase of the adjacent community of Ceresco. When it would become apparent in 1851 that Ceresco could not survive, the Phalanx Corporation would be dissolved, dividing up or disposing of its property and distributing its substantial profits to its former members. Alan Earl Bovay would arrive just as the Phalanx was disbanding, and Mapes would persuade him to cast his lot with the emerging Village of Ripon. He would purchase land in the 400 block of Watson Street and begin developing “Bovay’s Addition” to the village. As one of the towns first lawyers, Bovay would play an important role in Ripon’s growth into a city. As a political reformer with strong Whig Party connections in the East, he would take a leading part in the famous 1854 meeting in the Little White Schoolhouse, where the Republican Party would be being born.
23. Waldo Emerson speculated in land in the Wisconsin Territory. It would be interesting to have a map of the areas he at one time owned. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1850
When the small canal village known as Salt Port incorporated, it renamed itself Holley in honor of Myron Holley.
The Erie Canal, which had been originally dug out to a depth of at least 4 feet and a width of at least 40 feet, had by this time been expanded so that it was uniformly 7 feet deep and 70 feet wide. Plans for a 2d Erie Canal culvert at Holley, New York were drawn up — but this would never be actualized.
An Erie Canal weighlock was built in Syracuse.
On the Erie Canal, the Eureka propelled itself by means of a paddle wheel along its keel.
Buffalo built the Blackwell Canal, also known as the City Ship Canal.
The Santee and Cooper Canal ceased operations. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1851
The Erie Railroad, by this point under the control of Daniel Drew, became the 1st rail line connecting the Great Lakes with New-York and began to compete with the Erie Canal as a transportation route. HISTORY OF RR In New York, the Rochester, Auburn, and Syracuse Railroad received a charter for a line along the Erie Canal.
The West Troy Weighlock of the Erie Canal was completed.
The New York State policy of requiring railroads to pay the equivalent of Erie Canal tolls was abandoned. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1852
In Rochester, a weighlock was built on the Erie Canal.
This was the frontispiece of Jacob Abbott’s MARCO PAUL’S VOYAGES & TRAVELS, ERIE CANAL (Harper & Brothers, New York): HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1853
George M. Pullman, later a train car manufacturer, contracted to move some structures in Albion out of the way, to allow a widening of the Erie Canal.
July 21, Thursday: New York State accepted Boston Corner from Massachusetts.
The Wayne County Erie Canal village of Newark (later renamed Arcadia) was incorporated.
Henry Thoreau’s “Slavery in Massachusetts” was published by William Lloyd Garrison in The Liberator.
Here is an illustration of the period, indicating what sorts of people the illustrator believed read The Liberator:
In this same illustration, note what the illustrator suspected that such a person might have on his wall, besides an illustration from a Shakespearean play: HDT WHAT? INDEX
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I’ve had enough fun, I’ll show you the whole illustration: HDT WHAT? INDEX
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August 7, Sunday: Bronson Alcott visited Waldo Emerson in Concord. Emerson presented his suggestion that Alcott should make a “conversational tour … along the great Canal towns, west, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, perhaps Cleveland … and so on to Cincinnati” that fall. They would have prospectuses printed and, on Alcott’s way West, he would drop them off in each city, and then he would hold his conversations on the way back home along his route. Emerson proposed to purchase the $18.00 train ticket that would get Alcott started.
Henry Thoreau made an entry in his journal that he was later to copy into his early lecture “WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT” It would be combined with an entry made on May 27, 1851 and an entry made on July 24, 1852 to form the following:
[Paragraph 34] The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the community will most readily pay for it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man. The State does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet-laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine;1 and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. As for my own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is the most correct.
1. From 1630 to 1790, the reigning British monarch annually bestowed a butt of canary wine on the poet laureate. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1854
The Erie Canal was enlarged. A plan was devised to supply water for the Genesee Valley Canal summit level. The canal reached its peak capacity of 158,942 tons. This year and next the Chenango Canal carried 14% of all the coal carried on the state’s canals.
April 15, Saturday: Henceforward in New York all canal engineers would be selected by a Contracting Board made up of the Canal Commission, the State Engineer, and the Auditor of the Canal Department.
April 15: Morning. — Snow and snowing; four inches deep. Yesterday was very cold. Now, I trust, it will come down and out of the air. Many birds must be hard put to it. Some tree sparrows and song sparrows have got close up to the sill of the house on the south side, where there is a line of grass visible, for shelter. When Father came down this morning he found a sparrow squatting in a chair in the kitchen. Does n't know how it came there. I examined it a long time, but could not make it out. It was five or six inches long, with a somewhat finch-like bill (bluish-black above and light below); general aspect above pale brown mottled with buffish and whitish; bay and a little black on the wings; the crown a faint bay, divided by an ashy line, with a broad ashy line over eye and a distincter bay or chestnut line from the angle of the mouth backward; legs pale clear flesh- color, feet black, claws slender; two faint whitish bars on wings (the tips of feathers); the breast ashy-white, with many dart: or black spots edged with bay in chains; no yellow about it; a rounded tail, long and of a pretty uniform pale brown or bay, ashy on the inner vanes, but no white nor black in it; a rather slender bird. It made me think of the bay-wing [Vesper Sparrow Pooecetes gramineus] and of the Savannah sparrow.
P.M. — This cold, moist, snowy day it is easier to see the birds and get near them. They are driven to the first bare ground that shows itself in the road, and the weather, etc., makes them more indifferent to your approach. The tree sparrows look much stouter and more chubby than usual, their feathers being puffed up and darker also, perhaps with wet. Also the robins and bluebirds are puffed up. I see the white under sides of many purple finches, busily and silently feeding on the elm blossoms within a few feet of me, and now and then their bloody heads and breasts. They utter a faint, clear chip. Their feathers are much ruffled. The yellow- red-poll hops along the limbs within four or five feet of me. Martins the 13th first. The arrival of the purple finches [Carpodacus purpureus] appears to be coincident with the blossoming of the elm, on whose blossoms it feeds. Johnson in his “Wonder-working Providence” speaks of “an army of caterpillars” in New England in 1649, so great “that the cart wheels in their passage were painted green with running over the great swarms of them.” EDWARD JOHNSON HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1855
Experiments were made on the Erie Canal with an “expanding” paddlewheel steam driven boat (it reached a speed of 10 mph).
The approximate date the Schenectady, New York dry dock on the Erie Canal was closed. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1856
The Genesee Valley Canal was completed to Olean.
An Erie Canal bank break at Holley killed one person.
An aqueduct was built at Palmyra during the renovation of the Erie Canal.
The Montezuma Aqueduct, carrying the Enlarged Erie Canal over the Seneca River, was completed at a cost of $150,000.00. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1857
The New York legislature proposed diverting Lime Lake into Ischia Creek at the cost of $160,000, to provide water for the Genesee Valley Canal.
In New York during this year, 51,700 gross tons of coal from Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad cars were transferred to Chenango Canal boats, and 25,895 tons of Clinton, Oneida County, iron ore were shipped out to the railroad by means of canal boats.
A proposal was made to provide steam locomotives for the Erie Canal towpaths. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1858
An iron suspension Aldrich Change Bridge was erected across the Erie Canal, linking the villages of Macedon and Palmyra.
This year the canal boats delivered to Albany, mostly from the northern part of New York, 267,406,411 feet of boards and 11,949,700 feet of timber, plus 67,505 tons of barrel staves.
The Cathart Propellor, which turns with the rudder, was first used on the Erie Canal.
The steamboat Charles Mack traveled from Buffalo to Albany on the Erie Canal, using wood as fuel.
December 8, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau, Thomas Cholmondeley, and Friend Daniel Ricketson spent the forenoon in the Shanty on the Ricketson estate in New Bedford MA, according to Friend Daniel’s journal, “talking about mankind and his relationships here and hereafter.” After dinner Friend Daniel and Ellery Channing smoked while Henry and Walton Ricketson examined the daughter Anna Ricketson’s collection of plants, and then Henry and Cholmondeley went for a walk. They spent the evening in the sitting-room, according to Friend Daniel’s journal, “talking of old writers, Chaucer, &c.”
Erie Canal mule and horse driver Tom Kilroy was born in West Troy, New York. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1859
Several sets of horses fell into the Erie Canal at Schenectady on the same day.
September 28, Wednesday: During a rope-walking exhibition by Mons. Cornise in Albion a bridge over the Erie Canal, crowded with some 500 spectators, collapsed and 15 dead bodies would later be collected (in all likelihood there would have been a number of other bodies in the crumpled wreckage beneath the surface of the water).
September 28: At Cattle-Show to-day I noticed that the ladies’ apple (small, one side green, the other red, glossy) and maiden’s-blush (good size, yellowish-white with a pink blush) were among the handsomest. The pumpkin-sweet one of the largest exhibited. The ram’s horn was a handsome uniformly very dark purple or crimson. The white pine seed is very abundant this year, and this must attract more pigeons [American Passenger Pigeon Ectopistes migratorius]. Coombs tells me that he finds the seed in their crops. Also that he found within a day or two a full-formed egg with shell in one. In proportion as a man has a poor ear for music, or loses his ear for it, he is obliged to go far for it or fetch it from far, and pay a great price for such as he can hear. Operas, ballet-singers, and the like only affect him. It is like the difference between a young and healthy appetite and the appetite of an epicure, between a sweet crust and a mock-turtle soup. As the lion is said to lie in a thicket or in tall reeds and grass by day, slumbering, and sallies at night, just so CAT with the cat. She will ensconce herself for the day in the grass or weeds in some out-of-the-way nook near the house, and arouse herself toward night. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1860
It was in approximately this period that the Tonawanda Guard Lock was removed when its portion of the Erie Canal was enlarged.
A sign of the times: the New York canal town of Canal was renamed Memphis. During this year the Grand Trunk railroad line was opened between Québec and Rivière du Loup. The railroad seemed triumphant over the canal and over the toll road. During this year, as an early step toward the development of an internal combustion engine, Jean-Étienne Lenoir devised a mechanism in which a carburetor mixed liquid hydrocarbons (illuminating gas) with air and then detonated the resultant by means of a spark of electricity. It did not occur to anyone at this point, to compress the mixture prior to ignition.
During the 1860s and 1870s most of the locomotives introduced in the Boston vicinity were being constructed in Taunton by the design team of William Mason and W.F. Fairbanks. They were diamond-stack eight- wheelers. But what sort of locomotives had been being used on the Boston to Fitchburg railroad that ran past Walden Pond, while Henry Thoreau lived in his cabin there? Does anyone know? HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1862
September 1, Monday: People were killing each other at Chantilly/Ox Hill.
In upstate New York, enlargement of the Erie Canal to carry 270-ton boats had been completed at a total cost of $31,000,000.
This enormous sum of money had, of course, been flushed right down the toilet — as the era of the canal in the US was at this point simply over.24
November 11, Tuesday: The city of Rochester, New York banned many public amusements and any form of gambling, including shuffle board, card playing, billiards, and bowling, where money or liquor might be won. Even kite flying and swimming in the Erie Canal were interdicted, between 6 AM and 8 PM.
24. The Erie Canal can be said to be coextensive with Thoreau’s life, in that it started in 1817 and came to its far end in 1862. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1863
The initial enlargement of the Erie Canal had been completed. The tonnage carried reached 118,609 tons. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1865
March 17: At Rochester, New York the Genesee River flooded, washing away part of the Erie Canal’s banks and flooding the downtown’s Crossroads area. The D.R. Barton Building (the Commercial Bank Building) was among those destroyed, as were the offices of the Rochester Democrat in the Eagle Hotel Building. The New York Central and Erie Railroad bridges and the tracks between Rochester and Syracuse were washed out. An island below Lower Falls and a bar at the mouth of the Genesee River were created. The floodwaters lasted two days. Damages would be estimated at $1,000000.
A kidnap plot by John Wilkes Booth failed when President Abraham Lincoln did not arrive as expected at the Soldiers’ Home in Washington DC. The presidential itinerary had changed, and Lincoln –ironically– was attending at the time a reception in the lobby of Booth’s hotel. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Here is the President’s last photograph, showing him carefully posed as always in the manner which, photographers had learned, would minimize the impact of the one eye that stared always toward the nose:
The front page of The Liberator featured General Lee’s famous letter to a member of the Confederate Congress who had asked Lee whether it was a good idea to consider enlisting slaves owing to the lack of Southern manpower. Lee had replied: “I think the measure not only expedient, but necessary. The enemy will certainly use them against us if he gets possession of them. In answer to your second question, I can only say that, in my opinion, the negroes, under proper circumstances, will make efficient soldiers I think that those that are employed should be freed. It would be neither just nor wise, in my opinion, to require them to remain as slaves. The course to pursue, it seems to me, would be to call for such as are willing to come, with the consent of their owners.”
Also in this issue of The Liberator there appeared the following notice: COLORED MEN WANTED, For the United States Navy. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1868
US canal engineer E.H. Gill died in Richmond, Virginia.
Lake Ontario’s American Line of steamboats sold out to Canada’s Royal Mail Line.
The initial steamboatSTEAMBOAT to use the Erie Canal, the Edward Backus, arrived in Rochester, New York with a load of coal from Ithaca. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1871
The Seneca River Towing Path of the New York State Barge Canal, connecting Mud Lock on the Oswego Canal to the outlet of Onondaga Lake, was discontinued.
The canal boat A.D. Hoyt, loaded with rock salt, sank at Lock #8 of the Erie Canal.
The Pennsylvania Railroad bought out the Camden and Amboy Railroad, acquiring the Delaware and Raritan Canal. That canal company lost its use of the Schuylkill Navigation. Net earnings of the Delaware and Raritan Canal — $1,202,419.
Chicago completed the deep cut necessary to convert the upper sections of the Illinois and Michigan Canal to a sanitary canal, reversing the flow of the Chicago River.
Michigan’s St. Clair Flats Ship Canal opened.
April 28, Friday: When a section of the Erie Canal’s banks collapsed at the Ox-Bow in Fairport, the barge Bonnie Bird was carried a mile away from the canal by the escaping waters (the crew, and a team of horses, were unhurt).
Professor Henri-Frédéric Amiel, who would be referred to as the “Swiss Thoreau,” wrote in his JOURNAL INTIME: “For a psychologist it is extremely interesting to be readily and directly conscious of the complications of one’s own organism and the play of its several parts. It seems to me that the sutures of my being are becoming just loose enough to allow me at once a clear perception of myself as a whole and a distinct sense of my own brittleness. A feeling like this makes personal existence a perpetual astonishment and curiosity. Instead of only seeing the world which surrounds me, I analyze myself. Instead of being single, all of a piece, I become legion, multitude, a whirlwind — a very cosmos. Instead of living on the surface, I take possession of my inmost self, I apprehend myself, if not in my cells and atoms, at least so far as my groups of organs, almost my tissues, are concerned. In other words, the central monad isolates itself from all the subordinate monads, that it may consider them, and finds its harmony again in itself. Health is the perfect balance between our organism, with all its component parts, and the outer world; it serves us especially for acquiring a knowledge of that world. Organic disturbance obliges us to set up a fresh and more spiritual equilibrium, to withdraw within the soul. Thereupon our bodily constitution itself becomes the object of thought. It is no longer we, although it may belong to us; it is nothing more than the vessel in which we make the passage of life, a vessel of which we study the weak points and the structure without identifying it with our own individuality. Where is the ultimate residence of the self? In thought, or rather in consciousness. But below consciousness there is its germ, the punctum saliens of spontaneity; for consciousness is not primitive, it becomes. The HDT WHAT? INDEX
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question is, can the thinking monad return into its envelope, that is to say, into pure spontaneity, or even into the dark abyss of virtuality? I hope not. The kingdom passes; the king remains; or rather is it the royalty alone which subsists — that is to say, the idea — the personality begin in its turn merely the passing vesture of the permanent idea? Is Leibnitz or Hegel right? Is the individual immortal under the form of the spiritual body? Is he eternal under the form of the individual idea? Who saw most clearly, St. Paul or Plato? The theory of Leibnitz attracts me most because it opens to us an infinite of duration, of multitude, and evolution. For a monad, which is the virtual universe, a whole infinite of time is not too much to develop the infinite within it. Only one must admit exterior actions and influences which affect the evolution of the monad. Its independence must be a mobile and increasing quantity between zero and the infinite, without ever reaching either completeness or nullity, for the monad can be neither absolutely passive nor entirely free.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1872
Construction began on the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal, connecting Green Bay with Lake Michigan. Maine’s Cumberland-Oxford Canal ceased operations.
The steam-powered canal boat William Newman was built in Buffalo, New York.
During this year, in Section I of the Erie Canal, 17 boats sank.
In Buffalo, New York the screw-propelled Erie Canal boat William Newman was built.
The Suez Canal Company narrowly avoided bankruptcy. EGYPT
May 7, Tuesday: In the course of an argument at Ted Sweeny’s saloon in Buffalo, New York’s Erie Canal district another saloon keeper, John Gafney, gunned down local resident Patrick Fahey. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1873
Navigation on the Erie Canal was held up for 72 hours at Lock #6 in Watervliet when a weak foundation beneath the lock gave way.
This year 12 boats sank on Section I of the Erie Canal.
November 5, Wednesday: The new screw-propelled Erie Canal boat William Newman set a speed record — between Troy and Buffalo in 4 days and 22 hours.25
25. File this under last-ditch desperate attempts to keep up with “newer technology” (the railroad). HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1874
The Tory Benjamin Disraeli regained the Prime Ministership from William Gladstone, leader of the Liberals — and this time would be able to hold the leadership until 1878. He would seek to bring back the British Empire. First in 1875, he would purchase for Britain a large interest in the Suez Canal, which was a key link in the shipping route that connected Britain with its vast empire in India and the Far East.26 At the Congress of Berlin in 1878, Disraeli would help prevent Russian expansion in Turkey and would award Cypress to Berlin.
Queen Victoria much preferred Disraeli’s conservatism to William Gladstone’s liberalism. She also approved of the man’s charm. The Prime Minister would later remark that: “Everyone likes flattery, and when you come to royalty, you should lay it on with a trowel.”
Macedon, New York’s Erie Canal Lock #60 was converted to a double lock.
12,424,705 barrels of wheat and corn were shipped on the Illinois and Michigan Canal.
Once again work began on Wisconsin’s Portage Canal. The US Government began rebuilding the Fort Winnebago lock.
Colonel Merrill recommended Congress authorize thirteen locks and movable dams on the Ohio River, between Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Wheeling, West Virginia.
26. The hopelessly Eurocentric term “Far East” had been created in 1852 to designate “the extreme eastern regions of the Old World.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1880
When a railroad spur arrived at Mackinaw City a small community began to develop, following a street grid layout that dated back to 1857.
The Portage Company’s lock at the junction with the Wisconsin River was rebuilt by the US Government.
The defunct Genesee Valley Canal was sold to the Genesee Valley Canal Railway Company.
The Erie Canal system contained 4,350 boats. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1882
1,011,287 tons of wheat and corn were shipped on the Illinois and Michigan Canal.
The French began a Panamanian canal. AMANAPLANACANALPANAMA
The Dansville side-cut and the Wiscox and Ischuna reservoirs of the defunct Genesee Valley Canal were sold to farmers whose land adjoined them.
A sign of the times: tolls were discontinued on the Erie Canal. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1886
The Tonawanda River Lock of the Erie Canal was damaged by fire. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1888
The Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interoceanique de Panama went bankrupt.
AMANAPLANACANALPANAMA A vertical boat lift on France’s Sensée Canal at Les Fontinettes replaced five locks.
The extension of the Seneca River Towing Path of the Barge Canal between Baldwinsville and Jack’s Reef was abandoned.
Macedon’s Erie Canal Lock #60 was lengthened to accommodate double tows.27
27. They were still struggling to eke out that last little ounce of finessing that would render their obsolete technology again competitive with the newer technology — railroading. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1889
US canal engineer Horatio Allen died.
The Rochester and Brighton horse car line along Monroe Avenue in Rochester, New York was extended to the bank of the Erie Canal. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1891
October 8, Thursday: Herman Kilts was on his way home with a friend after an evening at the local saloon, when they pitched into the Erie Canal by “Profile Rock” near Little Falls (the horse also drowned, dragged down by the harness and buggy). As a result his younger brother Willard would need to take over the family’s butter and cheese farming business. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1893
Rochester, New York’s Clinton Avenue was extended south across the Erie Canal, to the city line.
January 10, Tuesday: Trial began in Paris, of Ferdinand de Lesseps, his son Charles, and a number of others on charges of bribery and corruption in their Panama Canal fiasco.
Fürstin Ninetta, an operetta by Johann Strauss to words of Wittmann and Bauer, was performed for the initial time, in the Theater-an-der-Wien of Vienna.
Willard Kilts’s elder brother Herman had been on his way home with a friend after an evening at the local saloon, on the night of October 8, 1891, when they had pitched into the Erie Canal by “Profile Rock” near Little Falls (the horse also was drowned, as it had been dragged down by the harness and buggy). As a result Willard had needed to take over the family’s butter and cheese farming business. His diary entry for this day was: Today was stormy and bad all day. John & I did chores then I backed the manure sleigh to the shed door & we cleaned that stable. After breakfast, John drew it out in the field & went down to VanSlykes after Keller’s boar. I helped put him in the pen & then took Bay Fan & the cutter & went to Fairfield to the Auction of Reese’s. He sold 20 heifers, cows, & old ones for less than $14.00 each. I also saw a man who wants to work next year but he wanted too much. I came home by way of Thompson’s & got a pup. He would not take pay for it. John did up the chores & split a little wood &c. Kaine worked for himself. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1895
The Boatman’s Association formed recently by Erie Canal workers to protest against unfair distribution practices, went on strike. A Captain Philips and his son were killed by boatmen while trying to take on a load of lumber in Tonawanda.
Construction began on the 2d enlargement of the Erie Canal.
Niagara Falls’s Hydraulic Canal was widened to 100 feet and deepened to an average of 10 feet.
In the Netherlands, D.J. Korteweg and his student G. deVries were able to derive a non-linear partial differential equation that would mimic the behavior of the solitary wave described by John Scott Russell, the wave form of waves in shallow water. This Korteweg-deVries (KdV) equation would play an important role in the development of a mathematical description of solitons.
HISTORY OF OPTICS
Percival Lowell began to publicize, in POPULAR ASTRONOMY and in The Atlantic Monthly and in this book MARS, that the canals of Mars were an intelligent race’s response to the progressive desiccation of their home environment, and that they represented irrigation canals to draw the remaining water toward still-fertile oases. The more impressionable of our society were of course fascinated:
ASTRONOMY
“Mars is essentially in the same orbit ... somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe.” — J. Danforth Quayle HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1896
The State Lock on the Soo Canal was replaced by the Poe Lock, named after Colonel Orlando Poe.
The Erie Canal was enlarged a 2d time.
William T. Love’s power generating canal project near the Niagara Falls ran out of funds while only partially completed. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1897
An electric mule was considered on the Erie Canal, using overhead wires such as are utilized by city trolley cars (for some reason this would not catch on).
A deepening of the Erie Canal in Pittsford was exposing black shale and interbedded dolomite, which would be put on the market as Pittsford Shale. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1898
The US Army began improvements on the Minnesota Canal.
When the costs on the as-yet-uncompleted 2d enlargement of the Erie Canal reached $9,000,000, the New York assembly passed a stop law halting this construction. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1902
June 8, Sunday: The Erie Canal boat Anson P. Hart out of Phoenix, New York, Captain George Pease, caught in strong winds, was nearly swept over the dam at Baldwinsville (a line was run out to the coal-laden vessel and it was drawn to the shoreline). HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1903
The New York legislature passed a bond issue to construct a Barge Canal to replace the old Erie Canal.
Paleontologist Clifton James Sarle named a shale/dolomite mixture “Pittsford Shale,” after the district at which the formation had been uncovered as the Erie Canal had been being deepened, during 1897/1898.
Mark Twain commented about the spectacular waters of Niagara, New York: NIAGARA FALLS is a most enjoyable place of resort. The hotels are excellent, and the prices not at all exorbitant. The opportunities for fishing are not surpassed in the country; in fact, they are not even equaled elsewhere. Because, in other localities, certain places in the streams are much better than others; but at Niagara one place is just as good as another, for the reason that the fish do not bite anywhere, and so there is no use in your walking five miles to fish, when you can depend on being just as unsuccessful nearer home. The advantages of this state of things have never heretofore been properly placed before the public. — SKETCHES NEW AND OLD HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1912
Lock #12 was built for the Champlain Canal at Whitehall, replacing the 1823 triple lock.
Rochester business interests began agitating to have the Erie Canal’s bed moved out of the city. The Common Council approved a funding ordinance to construct a subway system in the soon-to-be-abandoned Erie Canal bed, a right-of-way that would be abandoned as of 1919. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1914
Macedon, New York’s Erie Canal Lock #60 was abandoned to make way for the Barge Canal.
The first version of the manifesto of the Vorticist movement, Blast. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1917
A terminal building was built on the Champlain Canal at Whitehall (this would become the Skenesborough Museum, site of today’s Urban Cultural Park Visitor Center).
The New York State Barge Canal opened, replacing the Erie Canal. Navigation ceased on the Cayuga and Seneca Canal.
A bridge house was built on the Oswego Canal at Phoenix, to house the machinery for a nearby drawbridge.
Our national birthday, Wednesday the 4th of July: The Centennial Celebration of the Turning of the First Shovelful of Earth in the Construction of the Erie Canal was held at Rome, New York.
Citizens of Paris celebrated our 4th of July with us as General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing received a gift of American flags from French President Poincaré. CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1918
The Lake Rice/Bay of Quinte section of the Trent-Severn Waterway opened.
The New York State Barge Canal was completed. Downtown Utica had been successfully bypassed. The Erie Canal dam at Tonawanda had been removed so that tug-pulled Barge Canal boats could transit from Tonawanda to Buffalo. Periodic flooding in the area had also been alleviated. Construction began of Brooklyn’s Gowanus Grain Terminal as a terminus for the State Barge Canal.
May 10, Friday: The Barge Canal bypass at Rochester, New York opened. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1919
The Sabin Lock of the Soo opened.
One final boat ventured across Rochester’s Erie Canal aqueduct. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1920
The Erie Canal’s path through the city of Rochester lay abandoned. In approximately this period the Tonawanda Creek Dam was removed, rendering Tonawanda the western terminus of this canal system (any canal traffic heading further west would henceforward need to enter the Niagara River and travel to the Black Rock Canal, in order to continue on to Buffalo). HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1921
Rochester, New York authorized a subway in the old Erie Canal bed. The canal bridge on West Main Street was removed.
Tonawanda acquired former Erie Canal property from New York State (part of that land would become Niawanda Park).
The motorship Day Peckingpaugh built in Duluth, Minnesota was transported to New York where it would be used to carry building materials on the Barge Canal. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1922
Maintenance shops for the New York State Barge Canal were erected at Pittsford, Baldwinsville, and Waterford.
To alleviate congestion, the Rochester & Syracuse Railroad interurban constructed a cutoff in the bed of the abandoned Erie Canal at Lyons. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1926
Ernest Hemingway’s THE SUN ALSO RISES.
Rochester, New York annexed the Andrews Farm, Genesee Valley Park, and abandoned lands of the Erie Canal, increasing its municipal size to 34.76 square miles. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1940
Rochester, New York annexed abandoned Erie Canal lands near Monroe Avenue, and property near the airport, increasing its municipal size to 35.25 square miles.
In a grandiose gesture, Ernest Hemingway attempted to pay his night’s bar bill at New York’s Stork Club with his $100,000 royalty check for the screen rights to “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Club owner Sherman Billingsley asked him to wait until closing receipts had been accumulated, before cashing the check. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1960
The population of Boston was 697,197. The demolition of the West End was one of the first large scale urban renewal projects in America — unfortunately for the residents of the West End.
The old Syracuse, New York weighlock building of the Erie Canal was reopened as a canal museum.
“The only lesson of history is that there are no lessons of history.” — A.J.P. Taylor HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1970
A break in New York’s Barge Canal at Bushnells Basin southeast of Rochester destroyed one home and damaged forty others.
Boatman and author Richard Garrity retired after a lifetime working on the Erie Canal. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1991
When a Navy F-4 Phantom jet carcass was transported to a Schenectady museum by barge in this year, this transshipment marked the extreme terminus of the long period of commercial shipping via inland waterways such as the Erie Canal.
The New York Folklore Society began a survey of collections and archives in the state. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1994
The Lock #60 Locktenders Association was formed to maintain Macedon’s idle Erie Canal Lock #60. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ERIE CANAL ERIE CANAL
1996
June 2, Sunday: History had become plaque: a piece of cast bronze sponsored by the New York State Canal Society was placed at Buffalo’s harbor on the Niagara River, to commemorate that city as having been the Erie Canal’s western terminus.
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
Erie Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2015. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: August 24, 2015 HDT WHAT? INDEX
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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with